Claudia Tomateo

Claudia Tomateo is a PhD student in Urban Planning at DUSP MIT. She grew up in Wari territory, so called Lima-Peru. Claudia is a detribalized Indigenous woman descendant of the Quechua Chanka community. 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.

Before joining MIT Tomateo was 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, 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.