Vera Sales is a PhD candidate and part of the ANIMAPOLIS Research Group within the Department of Human Geography, Planning, and International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her project conceptualises animals and infrastructures as political subjects within discussions of urban inequalities in urban studies.

In her research project, "Humans, rats, and Infrastructures: a More-Than-Human Approach to Health Inequalities in Rio de Janeiro," she investigates more-than-human relationships and their outcomes in urban inequality in Brazil. Within this project, she examines how humans manage contentious relationships with rats and fragile infrastructures at the micro and macro levels. By focusing on how humans engage in the often unrecognised and seemingly mundane activities required to sustain these relationships individually, collectively, and at institutionally sanctioned levels, she explores how more-than-human relationships require demanding, resource-intensive labour. In her work, she highlights how this labour is often displaced onto already vulnerable individuals, who actively maintain and adapt their environment to contain the negative outcomes stemming from uneven other-than-human relationships.

She is particularly interested in intersectional scholarship engaging in critical infrastructure, care studies, and animal studies. Through her engagement with questions of race, class, and gender, her work aims to challenge mainstream understandings of more-than-human relationships and highlight their tensions.

BA 

Cities and Changes [Interdisciplinary Social Sciences]

MA

Contemporary Urban Transformations [Research Master Urban Studies]

Research Training and Fieldwork Preparation [Master International Development Studies]

Diversity & Inclusion Committee [Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies – GPIO]