Meet Endeavour Fellow Dr Pablo Fuentenebro

Dr Pablo Fuentenebro is one of two Endeavour Fellows at ICS during 2015. He is the recipient of an Australian Government Endeavour Fellowship (a prestigious six-month long fellowship awarded to high achieving applicants to conduct post-doctoral research).

Pablo, who has taken a year’s special leave from his position with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya, is visiting ICS until September.

During his time here Pablo is working on a research project with Professor Donald McNeill on the arts, cultural spaces and urban development in Sydney. 

‘In principle, I would like to do a comparative analysis with Los Angeles, a city that I examined at length in my doctoral dissertation,’ he explains. ‘Although different from one another, both cities have very interesting (and somewhat controversial) urban development plans underway. I am interested in the role cultural facilities (museums, arts centres) play in the development of such projects.’

Pablo has a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles. His doctoral dissertation, New Urban Spaces. Museums, Architecture and the Cultural Economy of Cities, focused on the cultural dimension of urbanisation, looking at the ways cities use architecture and cultural infrastructures to promote urban growth and regeneration, with a particular emphasis on modern art museums.

Following his PhD, Pablo joined the United Nations University International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (UNU-IHDP) in Bonn, Germany, where he worked on the preparation of the Inclusive Wealth Report 2012, a project that was launched at the Rio+20 Conference in June 2012. For the past two and a half years, he has been with the Environment Programme in Nairobi where his work has focused on education and outreach programs in higher education, with a special emphasis on developing countries. 

Now Pablo is enjoying focusing on his research again and he is also making the most of his first trip to Sydney.

‘I had wanted to get back into research for some time and had been talking about this with Donald for a while. When I came across the Endeavour Fellowship, it seemed like a really good opportunity. We worked on a proposal last year, and I was really excited when I got the news that I had been awarded the fellowship.’ 

‘I think that the Institute for Culture and Society is a leading institution in its field, and it's a great privilege to be here’, he says. ‘Also, this is my first time in Sydney so I’m really excited! There are lots of things going on in the city; it’s a great place for a geographer!’

10 June 2015