Centro de estudos sobre a Mudança
Socioeconómica e o Território

Nuno Grancho is an architect, researcher, teacher, and historian of objects, buildings, cities, and landscapes. His work studies how spatial practices of power and resistance through architectures and cities of struggle shape the modernity and coloniality of South Asia from the early 16th century to the present day.

His research projects are focused on questions of human and material agency, the epistemology and geopolitics of architecture and urbanism as a technique of social intervention.

Of particular importance to his work and writings are the spatial-morphological arrangements in architecture and cities that identify and enable the private as withdrawal from the world and the public as engagement with that same world and simultaneously, the tension between these dichotomies. 

He has held a PhD in Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Coimbra since 2017. In 2014, he was a Visiting Researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Since 2017, he has been a Postdoctoral researcher at DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte, University Institute of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal.

From September 2021 until August 2024, he was a Postdoctoral researcher and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow with the research project “Privacy on the move: two-way Processes, Data and Legacy of Danish metropolitan and colonial Architecture and Urbanism” at the Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. From September 2021 until August 2024, he was a Visiting Researcher at the Royal Danish Academy – School of Architecture, Design and Conservation, Copenhagen, Denmark. From September 2021 until August 2024, he taught at the Royal Danish Academy – School of Architecture, Design and Conservation, Copenhagen, Denmark. In August 2024, he was a Visiting Researcher at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, College of Humanities and Fine Arts, Department of Architecture, USA. Since August 2024, he has been an Affiliated Member of the Indian Ocean World Centre (IOWC) at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Since September 2024, he has been an Affiliated Scholar at the Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Since October 2024, he has been an Affiliated Scholar at the Royal Danish Academy – School of Architecture, Design and Conservation, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.