Abel Guerra

Abel Guerra is an LSE Fellow in Global Media and Communication. He first joined the department as a PhD Researcher in 2021, and has recently finalised his thesis “Chasing cities: platforms and knowledge-making between datafication and lived urban histories.

Abel’s research has focused on Uber and the production of different ways of knowing and experiencing urban space, focusing on the platform’s operations in Brazil. This work drew on decolonial and feminist approaches and interpretive methods to address the practices and perspectives of three different social worlds involved in Uber’s web: Uber Engineers themselves, Brazilian researchers and policy makers and Uber drivers in São Paulo city. His work provides a framework to address platform power and digital technology through the lenses of global power and knowledge production inequalities, neoliberal reason and bottom-up practices. In addition to that, Abel is also interested in feminist and gender studies debates, with ongoing research on transgender perspectives and online transphobic politics and cultures.

Before joining LSE as a fellow, Abel taught at both LSE and Goldsmiths University. He holds a master’s and a bachelor’s degree in media and communications from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, in Brazil, where he is a member of the research group R-EST - Sociotechnical Network Studies.

Expertise

Platform labour and urbanism; Critical Data Studies; Global South; Feminist and decolonial approaches

In 2025/26, Abel is teaching MC408 (AT) and MC4M1 (WT).