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 people. She is an architect, urban designer, activist, and educator studying Indigenous data visualization as a tool for collective liberation and the design of Indigenous futures. Grounded in Indigenous methodologies and guided by ideas of reciprocity, solidarity, caretaking, and cyclicality, she hopes to contribute to the dismantling of hegemonic, patriarchal, and extractive academic structures.

Tomateo is currently facilitating Indigenous data visualization and resurgence initiatives with Amazonian Quechua communities in so-called Peru. Before joining MIT she was a Research Fellow at the Urban Systems Lab in The New School. Claudia has taught design studios and GIS seminars at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and The New School Parsons 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.