Martin Checa-Artasu

Doctor en Geografía Humana

River landscape with a stone bridge. Photo: Martín Checa-Artasu

Photo: Martín Checa-Artasu

About

Martín M. Checa-Artasu is a cultural geographer and full professor (Profesor Titular C) in the Department of Sociology at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa (Mexico City), where he teaches in the BA programme in Human Geography and in the graduate programmes in Humanities (UAM-Iztapalapa) and Urban Studies (UAM-Azcapotzalco). He reads buildings, landscapes and visual culture as documents of geography and history.

Born in Barcelona in 1969, he holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Barcelona (2006, supervised by Horacio Capel), an MBA from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and a degree in Geography and History (Archaeology) from the University of Barcelona. He moved to Mexico in 2006 and taught at the Universidad de Quintana Roo, Tecnológico de Monterrey (Puebla) and El Colegio de Michoacán before joining UAM Iztapalapa in 2010.

He is a Level 2 member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers (SNI–SECIHTI, through 2030) and a regular member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences (since 2017). From 2018 to 2021 he held a Mercator Fellowship in the DFG-funded project Global Gothic – International Gothic Architecture in the 20th and 21st Centuries at Technische Universität Dresden, and since 2016 he has been a researcher in the Italian Diaspora in Latin America project of the EdA International Research Center (Rome), led by Olimpia Niglio (University of Pavia). He sits on the scientific boards of EdA Esempi di Architettura, Biblio3W and Revista RedCA, and was editor of Polis México (2023–2026).

He has published 310 works, including 82 peer-reviewed articles, 91 book chapters and 24 books as author, co-author or editor, has given 213 conference papers in ten countries and has supervised nine doctoral theses. His monograph Neo-Gothic Architecture in Mexico. A Geographical Vision (Springer, 2025) received the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana’s XXXV Research Prize in Social Sciences and Humanities (2026).

Research

  • Geography of heritage in Mexico. Neo-Gothic architecture in Mexico and Latin America; Italian architects, sculptors and marble workers in Porfirian Mexico (Adamo Boari and others); religious architecture and its spatial scales.
  • Landscape and landscape culture. The social construction of landscape in Mexico through painting, photography and film; landscape as a common good and the absence of a Mexican landscape law.
  • City, energy and territory. Green infrastructure and urban space; the heritage of the electricity and oil sectors; Mexico’s «other cities» and overlooked processes of urbanisation.

Latest book

Neo-Gothic Architecture in Mexico. A Geographical VisionNeo-Gothic Architecture in Mexico. A Geographical Vision
Springer, The Latin American Studies Book Series, 2025. 440 pp. ISBN 978-3-031-89540-1.
The first geographical overview of Mexico’s Neo-Gothic architecture: where it was built, who promoted it and what it reveals about the country that raised it.
doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-89541-8

 

Selected publications

  • 2026 — Spirituality, heritage, and symbology: great neogothic temples in Latin America as faithscapes. EdA Esempi di Architettura, 13(1), 143–158. doi.org/10.53136/979122182478011
  • 2025 — Neo-Gothic Architecture in Mexico. A Geographical Vision. Cham: Springer, The Latin American Studies Book Series, 440 pp. ISBN 978-3-031-89540-1. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-89541-8
  • 2025 — El paisaje como instrumento político para la crítica territorial. Quince años de experiencias y reflexiones desde América Latina. In América Latina: paradigmas, procesos y desafíos en un contexto de cambios (hiper)acelerados, Asociación Española de Geografía, 589–602. doi.org/10.21138/al.2025.lc
  • 2024 — El Palacio Postal de la Ciudad de México. Historia y patrimonio (with F. J. Navarro). Mexico City: Bonilla Artigas Editores, 144 pp. ISBN 978-607-5904-03-0.
  • 2023 — Modernización urbana y arquitectura neogótica en el casco antiguo de la Ciudad de México. El caso del Edificio de Correos y el Banco Agrícola e Hipotecario, 1899-1907 (with F. J. Navarro). Ciudad y Territorio. Estudios Territoriales, 55(216), 407–430 (Scopus Q2). doi.org/10.37230/cytet.2023.216.8
  • 2023 — México Industrial 1923. Una película silente centenaria, hoy un patrimonio cultural de México. Fuentes Humanísticas, 35(67), 217–225. doi.org/10.24275/NVJX4130
  • 2022 — Neo-Gothic Architecture in Mexico from the Porfiriato to the Present. In B. Borngässer & B. Klein (eds.), Global Gothic. Neogothic Church Architecture in the 20th and 21st Centuries, Leuven University Press, 126–145.
  • 2022 — The Persistence of Neo-Gothic Architecture in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century South America. In Global Gothic, Leuven University Press, 110–125.
  • 2022 — El uso del neogótico en la modernidad arquitectónica mexicana. La microhistoria de dos iglesias como ejemplo. Academia XXII, 13(25), 75–101. doi.org/10.22201/fa.2007252xp.2022.25.83151
  • 2022 — El templo neogótico de la Santa Cruz de Cantera: una interpretación de la Sainte-Chapelle en León, Guanajuato. Legado de Arquitectura y Diseño, 16(30), 49–60. doi.org/10.36677/legado.v17i31.15254
  • 2022 — Historia y rehabilitación de la Casa O’Hea, un ejemplo de arquitectura civil neogótica en la Ciudad de México (with F. J. Navarro). Gremium, 18, 38–58. doi.org/10.56039/rgn18a05
  • 2021 — Arquitectos y artistas en la diáspora italiana en Latinoamérica. Diplomacia cultural en acción (ed., with O. Niglio). Rome: Aracne Editrice, 496 pp.. doi.org/10.53136/9791259943903
  • 2021 — Adamo Boari (1863–1928). Arquitecto entre América y Europa, 2 vols. (with O. Niglio). Rome: Aracne Editrice.
  • 2021 — El neogótico en Jalisco. Guía básica para la apreciación del entorno edificado. Guadalajara: Arquitónica Editorial, 207 pp. Francisco de la Maza Prize for architectural heritage conservation, INAH 2022.
  • 2020 — Legislación y paisaje. Un debate abierto en México (ed., with A. Alonso Navarrete). UAM Azcapotzalco. Best research work, IV Latin American Biennial of Landscape Architecture. http://zaloamati.azc.uam.mx/handle/11191/6875
  • 2019 — Italianos en México. Arquitectos, ingenieros, artistas entre los siglos XIX y XX (ed., with O. Niglio). Rome: Aracne Editrice.
  • 2016 — El neogótico en la arquitectura americana. Historia, restauración, reinterpretaciones y reflexiones (ed., with O. Niglio). Rome: Aracne Editrice, 506 pp..
  • 2013 — La Iglesia y la expansión del neogótico en Latinoamérica: una aproximación desde la geografía de la religión. Naveg@mérica, 10. martinchecaartasu.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/articulo-La-iglesia-y-la-expansion-del-neogotico-en-Latinoamerica.pdf
  • 2012 — Catedrales neogóticas y espacialidades del poder de la Iglesia en las ciudades del occidente de México: una visión desde la geografía de la religión. Scripta Nova, 16(418).

Full lists (in Spanish): Books · Articles · Book chapters · Conference papers.

Profiles and identifiers

Contact

Departamento de Sociología, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Iztapalapa
San Rafael Atlixco 186, Edificio H, 1st floor, H-160, Col. Vicentina, 09340 Mexico City, Mexico
martinchecaartasu@gmail.com · mcheca@xanum.uam.mx

Download full CV (PDF, Spanish, June 2026)