The Urban Ethnography Network formally started its activity in 2016 under the FCT/CAPES agreement “Cidades em mudança: processos participativos em Portugal e no Brasil” (Changing cities: participatory processes in Portugal and Brazil) (2016, UFF and ISCTE, coordinated by Graça Cordeiro and Renata de Sá Gonçalves).

This network stems from the consolidation of collaborative relationships between several researchers and various national and international institutions over the last 15 years. This has been achieved mainly through post-graduate training in the interdisciplinary area of Urban Studies, initially through the Masters and PhDs in urban Anthropology, in partnership between ISCTE and the University of Rovira e Virgili (initiated in 2004 lasting until 2011), and then through the PhD in Urban Studies, in a partnership between ISCTE and FCSH-Nova. The graduate studies in Urban Ethnography (FLUP, since 2014 and ISCTE, since 2017) has also aided this collaboration significantly.

Based on these exchanges between, above all, fellow researchers from Brazil, Catalonia, France and the United States, Lígia Ferro and Graça Cordeiro proposed in March 2015 to form the ETNO.URB, which in the following year was coordinated by Lígia Ferro (IS-FLUP), Patrícia Pereira (CICS-NOVA) and Rita Cachado (CIES- ISCTE), who are still in charge of its coordination. In 2017, two new members joined the coordination team: Manuel Garcia-Ruiz (CIES- ISCTE) and Renata de Sá Gonçalves (UFF), thus strengthening the relations between the two centres.

FUNDING ENTITY: CIES-IUL, ISCTE-IUL