Professor Maria Rovisco

Profile

I joined the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds as Associate Professor in January 2019. Prior to this, I held academic posts at the University of Leicester, York St John University, and the University of Lisbon (Portugal). I hold a PhD in Sociology from the University of York, an MPhil in Communication, Culture and Information Technologies from ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon, and a BA in Sociology from the University of Coimbra. I am a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University, where I was also a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in 2006.

I am a cultural sociologist whose work explores how artists shape the political imagination and civic life. My research is grounded in cultural sociology, an approach that takes seriously how people use culture to construct lines of action and experience meaning, and is sustained conversation with disciplines such as media and communication studies, philosophy, art history, and film studies.

Through my writing, I challenge the idea that artworks such as a film, a play, a novel, or a visual arts installation are political because what they represent through their aesthetic content is “political”. I argue instead that producing and consuming them are social and aesthetic experiences that have political consequences. I have published widely on topics such as the civic action of artists, art and displacement, the visual strategies of social movements, the centrality of the imagination in politics, cosmopolitanism as a cultural practice, and the aesthetic dimensions of the public sphere. I have led and collaborated on interdisciplinary research projects and public engagement initiatives across the UK, Europe and Latin America. The KE project, Re-Imagining the Wetlands, investigates the potential of the arts for socio-ecological transformation by fostering knowledge-exchange between academic and non-academic partners at the Delta de Tigre (Argentina).

In my book Artists, Cosmopolitanism, and the Civic Imagination (Routledge, 2025), I show how artists contribute to the formation of civic culture beyond conventional sites of political participation. My current research examines how Argentinian artists imagine and enact more just socio-ecological futures. This work explores how artistic ways of knowing and place-based knowledge systems - including Indigenous cosmologies - offer alternative pathways for addressing extractivism, biodiversity loss, and climate change.

As a public scholar, I am committed to fostering dialogue among academics, artists, activists, and civil society. I serve as a non-fiction editor for The Other Side of Hope, an independent, not-for-profit literary magazine created and edited by migrants, and as a Trustee of Guardians Worldwide, which supports a global alliance of communities practising intergenerational care for land and water. I am also a member of the University of Leeds’ Just Transition Taskforce, contributing to initiatives advancing just transition in higher education and advocating for fossil-free research collaborations.

Responsibilities

• Taught Postgraduate Tutor
• Member of the University of Leeds's Just Transition Taskforce

Research interests

My research interests focus on the political agency of artists, visual culture, futures research, arts-based methods, public sphere, socio-ecological imagination, wetlands cultural heritage.

Primary investigator (PI)

• Reimagining the Wetlands in Tigre (Argentina): Harnessing the Power of the Arts for Socio-ecological Transformation

Qualifications

• PhD in Sociology, University of York
• MPhil in Communication, Culture and Information Technologies
• BA in Sociology, University of Coimbra

Professional memberships

• ESA - European Sociological Association
• ISA - International Sociological Association

Current postgraduate researchers

• Tabitha Fuster-Burnett
• Greta Bustamante
• Zhiwen Yang
• Linda Wu