Alexandre da Silva Faustino

With a background in environmental and urban planning, Alex’s work focuses on urban waterscapes and grassroots activism, through interdisciplinary practise-based research that intersects environmental management, climate action, ecology, planning, urbanism, geography, regeneration, and activism. His academic interests are theories and practices of urban water governance that can deliver regenerative and caring environments, and the role of local communities and grassroots activism in the pursuit of libertarian modes of urban and planetary dwelling.

As part of RMIT Vice-Chancellor Postdoctoral Fellowships, Alex has established since 2025 a research program on “Caring with regenerative waterscapes”.

Intensifying and escalating disasters worldwide – of political, social, economic and ecologic dimensions – assert the current epoch of polycrisis, and the emergence of what has been framed as the regenerative paradigm, a promising way to reposition human societies in late capitalism towards ethics and practices of healing a world in ruination. This research program critically enquiries how the regenerative agenda—focusing on grassroots and community efforts—intersects with, and might be capable, or not, to advance key justice agendas: Indigenous, climate, water and urban.

Based on a case study of Melbourne’s waterscape as a living bioregion, Alex uses a mixed-methods strategy, combining a comprehensive mapping of the metropolitan waterscape (considering socio-economic, bio-geo-physical, historical, cultural and political dimensions) with a detailed and relational qualitative study of the constellation of grassroots and community engagements for restoration, repair and care of waterways socio-ecologies. Grassroots actors—river keepers, community groups, and cultural associations—are already vital players in the regenerative turn.

This program investigates how activism driving regenerative change is shaped by unique social identities, non-dominant economies and it is also catalysed by disruptive processes of reconnection to place. Furthermore, this work pays attention to how these groups are building responsible practices in their regenerative engagements, seeking to expose the barriers that continue to perpetuate harm and marginalisation to human-water relations. This is critical in understanding both the potential and the limitations of the regenerative movement.