Claudia Tomateo

Claudia Tomateo grew up in Wari territory, so called Lima-Peru. She is a detribalized Indigenous woman descendant of the Quechua Chanka community. Claudia is also an architect, and urban designer. Her research focuses on the restitution of Indigenous worlds through the construction of typological frameworks for agro-ecological and bio-cultural strategies rooted in Indigenous cosmovisions. Through the visualization of Indigenous governance systems grounded in ideas of reciprocity, solidarity, caretaking, and cyclicality, she hopes to repurpose mapping to contribute to the dismantling of hegemonic, patriarchal, capitalistic, and extractive urban studies and planning structures.

Tomateo is a Research Fellow at the Urban Systems Lab in The New School and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP. As an educator, Claudia has taught architecture studios and mapping seminars at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, the Tecnológico de Monterrey, the Peru’s National School of Engineering, The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Claudia holds the degrees of Professional Architect from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, and a Master’s of Architecture in Urban Design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She will be joining the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT as a PhD student in the Fall of 2023.