Chandra Morrison Ariyo is an urban ethnographer who specializes in public art practices, visual culture, and urbanism in Latin America. For over fifteen years, she conducted long-term ethnographic research, on the ground and in digital formats, with graffiti communities in São Paulo, Brazil, and Santiago, Chile, with her broader investigations of public debates and controversies about urban art extending across the Latin American continent.

Complementing this work, Dr Morrison Ariyo also has collaborated on participatory and multimodal research projects on feminist activism and urban violence, and on cultural policy to support socially engaged art in the United Kingdom. She is a founding member of the Feminist Cities Co-Lab, funded by the British Academy, and she is highly experienced at developing and leading training in interdisciplinary research methods.

Dr Morrison Ariyo holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and undertook postdoctoral research and teaching in the School of Advanced Study, University of London prior to moving to LSE. She joined the Department of Geography and Environment initially as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and as PI for a British Academy project, before taking up her current role as Visiting Research Fellow alongside pursuing her own artistic practice.

Her book Metagraffiti: Graffiti Art and the Urban Image in Latin America is published with Rutgers University Press.  

Selected publications

• Morrison Ariyo, Chandra. 2024. Metagraffiti: Graffiti Art and the Urban Image in Latin America. Rutgers University Press.
• Morrison, Chandra. 2022. ““Erasing a mural does not erase reality”: Queer visibility, urban policing, and the double life of a mural in Ecuador.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 40(3): 432-450. Read paper.   
• England, Lauren, Chandra Morrison, and Ed Charlton. 2024. Small Arts Organisations, Social Value and Policy: A Policy Case Study of the London School of Mosaic. Published by King’s College London, London (UK). DOI:10.18742/pub01-158. Read paper. 
• Mapping Social Value. Short documentary film, 2023. Watch film. 

Awards

Dr Morrison Ariyo’s research has been supported through awards from the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, and the UK Society for Latin American Studies.