Hi, my name is Neuza. I am a Portuguese architect, artist, educator and researcher based in Chester (UK).

I am a visiting lecturer and a research assistant with RECAP (the Centre for Research into Education, Creativity and Arts through Practice) at the University of Chester. I also work as an Independent Assessor at Manchester Metropolitan University.

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I am the community engagement and heritage officer for CPRE on the Liverpool City Region Ringway, a walking and cycling route connecting places across the Liverpool City Region. My role focuses on working with communities, local organisations and cultural and heritage partners to bring the stories, memories and lived knowledge of the places along the route into the project.

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My practice moves between architecture, art, education and community engagement, with a particular interest in participation, social and spatial justice.

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I am a member of Architects Sans Frontières UK and a Castlefield Gallery Member Artist. I am also an executive member of Chester International Links Association (CILA), a charity that develops connections between Chester and its twin and partner cities in Europe (Sans in France, Senigallia in Italy and Lörrach in Germany). I am a Director of Company Carpi CIC, which creates opportunities for music, performing arts and visual arts within communities, and I am part of Yspaces CIC, which works to create affordable studio and gallery spaces for artists and students in Chester city centre. I also review for iJADE (the International Journal of Art & Design Education), and AMPS (Architecture, Media, Politics, Society). 

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I am currently completing a Doctorate in Education at the University of Chester, where I have been developing The Missing Building, an international feminist participatory study that uses lived experience, imagination and making to explore what people need, value and feel is missing from the places where they live. The research asks whose knowledge counts in city-making, who gets to take part, and what might change when the power to imagine, design and make our cities is no longer separated from the people who live in them. To understand a place means listening to the people who depend on it, remember it and make lives within it. Their knowledge is t is part of how the city can be understood.