TEAM

UPDATED March 2026

Jordi Nofre (LXNIGHTS Research Group Coordinator) holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Barcelona (2009). Since 2019 Nofre is FCT Associate Research Professor [Investigador Principal FCT] in Urban Geography at the Interdisciplinary Center of Social Sciences at NOVA University of Lisbon, supported by the Scientific Employment Stimulus Program of the Portuguese Foundation for Science & Technology. His research includes 3 main topics: (i) Nightlife, tourism and urban change; (ii) Social geographies of youth in Euro-Mediterranean countries; and (iii) Environment, society, and global change. He is author of 103 publications, has participated in 13 research grants, and has been Scientific Advisor of the project ‘Geographies of Nightlife in Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona (2018-2020)’, funded by Reina Sofia Centre on Youth & Adolescent Studies (Spain),  “SAFE!N Project: Safe Night Out Certification in Lisbon’, a community-focused project funded by the Lisbon City Council (BIPZIP-Ref.0095/2015), and has recently been appointed as Scientific Expert of the Barcelona Time Use Initiative for a Healthy Society (2023) towards new forms of daily organization aiming at enhancing social well-being and a better community life. *Contact: jnofre@fcsh.unl.pt

Manuel García-Ruiz (Fieldwork Coordinator) holds a PhD in Sociology from CIES-IUL and is Associated Researcher at IS-FLUP. He holds an international BA in Communication Sciences from the University of Alicante (Spain) and from the Université Paris Dauphine (2010) and a PGDip in Data Analysis from the ISCTE-IUL (2017). He has a particular interest in Light Festivals as instruments for the territorial development of Portuguese secondary cities (medium and small) through the creation of a highly competitive and specialized creative tourism. He is an advisory member (international festival advisor) of Spectrum Network and frequent festival consultant worldwide. He is the coeditor of Etno.Urb Network blog, and the Director of the Urban Audiovisual Festival (UAF). Manuel is author of dozens of papers and workshops driver on the field of the arts-in-the-public space, cultural policing and cultural management.

João Carlos Martins (Guest Lecturer, Uiversity of Algarve) holds a BA and PhD in Sociology and a Master in Urban Anthropology. He is currently Guest Lecturer in Sociology of Tourism at the University of Algarve. He was also postdoctoral researcher in the H2020 – ROCK grant “Regeneration and Optimization of Cultural Heritage in Creative and Knowledge Cities”, at Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa. His main research topicsare related to the multidimensional changes on socially and spatially deprived urban spaces and its relationship with contemporary commodification of cities cultural heritage. Martins been also working on the multiple areas of public and private interest on the urban regeneration of post-recession cities and their former industrial territories. Recently, he has worked as a scientific advisor on some municipally funded pilot projects, under the initiative BIP/ZIP, on the fields of Nightlife (Cais do Sodre, Lisbon) and Social Housing (Marvila, Lisbon).

Begoña Aramayona (University of Sheffield) holds an International PhD in Social Psychology obtained at Autonomous University of Madrid in 2019, and currently is MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Sheffield (UK) conducting a 2-year individual research grant on informal economies in the urban night of southern European cities. She was also a postdoctoral fellow iat Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). She explores the field of Urban studies through qualitative methodologies, with special interest on urban nightlife, securitisation, informality, displacement and visual-based methodologies. She coordinated the project “The Displacement of Informality: Geographies in the city of Madrid” (funded by the Urban Economy Area, Madrid’s City Council, 2018-2019) and she lead the project “Geographies of the Nocturnal City: A comparative and policy-oriented research on nocturnal leisure practices of young people in Lisbon, Barcelona and Madrid” (funded by Centre of Young Studies Reina Sofía, 2018-2020: ). Her research has been awarded with the 1st prize at II Heritales Sustainable Communities in 2017, organized by ‘UNESCO Chair in Intangible Heritage’ and University of Evora, and the I YERUN Research Mobility Award in 2018. Recently awarded with a post-doc visiting fellowship at CURA (Centre of Urban Research on Austerity; DMU, Leicester) in 2020. Based on her desire of disseminating academic outcomes to broader audiences, she has also directed some ethnographic documentaries, such as “Next Stop: La Latina” (2017) and “Carmen: Memorias Vivas del Rastro” (2018).

Miguel Neiva (Erasmus University, NL) is  M.A. in Cultural Economics & Entrepreneurship from the Erasmus University Rotterdam and is currently an FCT International Doctoral Fellow at the same institution. His publications have tackled the topics of creative entrepreneurship and cultural policy at transnational (EU) and city (Porto) levels. His research focuses on the spatial and social dynamics of the creative sector and he is enthusiastic about the night-time economy, regional and urban policy, ecosystem frameworks, as well as the intersection of art and design with technology. His curriculum includes professional experience in the cultural sector, particularly in music and film.

Jaime Puig is Researcher & Lecturer at the University of Seville (Spain) in Language and Literature Education. His PhD was focused on the Poetic Nocturne in Modern Mexican Poetry. He has studied literature from different approaches such as comparatism or gender and has organized conferences such as DIVERYGEN (Sexual Diversity and Gender in Education, Philology and the Arts). He has been visiting professor at Boston University, LMU-Munich, UNAM, University of Iceland, Universitá degli Studi di Bergamo or Babes-Bolyai University. He also works in Cultural and Youth Activism and Cooperation for Development in the Saharawi refugee camps.

Visiting Researchers hosted @ LXNIGHTS

Julia Trzcińska, Erasmus student (University of Warsaw, PL)

Álvaro Mazorra, PhD student (Universidad Nacional a Distancia, ES)

Víctor Riesgo, PhD student (Universidad Nacional a Distancia, ES)

Ronni David, MA student (Utrecht University, NL)

Enrico Petrilli, postdoc (L’Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, IT)

Alec Roth, PhD student (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, BEL)

Robert Pawlusiński, PhD (Jagiellonian University in Krakow, PL)

Magdalena Kubal-Czerwińska, PhD (Jagiellonian University in Krakow, PL)

Tomás Rojas, PhD student (Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, ES)

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