Quentin Rihoux

Quentin Rihoux is a PhD candidate in Urban Geography in the Department of Geography and Sustainability at the University of Lausanne. He is working on his thesis as a member of the M³ – Materialities | Multiplicities | Metropolis research group under the supervision of Martin Müller.

He received Master degrees in Architecture from the Ecole Nationale d'Architecture de Versailles and in Town and Country Planning from Tongji University Shanghai. After working for some years in the field of urban design and planning, he completed a master's degree in urbanism at Sciences Po Paris.

Quentin Rihoux's research lies at the intersection of political economy and cultural theory, with a particular focus on urban projectification - the processes of invoking projects as habitual, legitimate and performative responses to urban problems. While critical urban studies literature on projects sees them primarily as instruments of urban governance, he proposes to supplement this approach by investigating how the 'project' as a conceptual framework is becoming increasingly pervasive for the transformation of urban spaces, with a focus on the dynamics of order, power and contestation within these processes. Equally trained in quantitative and qualitative research, his methodological inclinations incorporate database analysis and assemblage applications with ethnographic sensitivity. By crafting and testing novel ways of analysing Urban Development Projects, his work aims to advance urban political geography debate on the politicisation of urbanisation processes and to partake in developing a postcolonial understanding of how concepts shape the production of cities.

Curriculum vitae