She holds a degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the Federal University of Ceará (UFC 1999), Master in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC 2003) where she studied the relationship between urban planning and socio-spatial inequalities. She holds a PhD in Architecture and Urbanism from the University of Brasília (UNB 2009) where she researched the tension between the Right to the City and the growing incidence of Environmental Regulation in the Brazilian urban territory. She was a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC 2015/2016) where she taught a course on Informal Settlements. She is currently a permanent faculty member of the Graduate Program in Architecture, Urbanism and Design at the Federal University of Ceará, and a senior associate editor of the Journal of Urban Affairs. She develops research projects on urban insurgencies and the potential of urban regulations to materialize the claims for the right to the city, using qualitative methods (documentary analysis, participant observation) and quantitative methods (GIS and Information Modeling). Its scientific activity has an extensionist character, dialoguing with the various space-producing agents, in particular the residents of popular settlements.