Originally developed within feminist and intersectional research in the social sciences, Relief Maps have been applied and further developed across a wide range of fields and contexts. Over time, the model has been adapted to different research questions, scales, social processes and areas of inquiry.

This section features all the publications related to our research project. Here, you can explore our academic papers that reflect the ongoing work and findings of our team. Together, they illustrate the diversity of applications of the model, from academic research to teaching practices, applied research and policy-oriented studies.

For other projects and publications that have used or expanded the Relief Maps framework, look here.

Some of the articles can be found in the UPF repository (repositori.upf.edu). 

INTERMAPS Team. (2026). Guide on Ethical Issues for Data Collection with Relief Maps. Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

The guide gathers reflections, learnings, and protocols developed throughout the project’s data collection process. You will find the ethical principles that have guided our fieldwork, as well as real cases and concrete strategies we have incorporated based on the tensions and dilemmas encountered in various contexts.

It is addressed to both researchers and professionals who wish to use Relief Maps+ in research, social intervention, or educational contexts.

You can find it attached in Catalan and English or download it here: https://doi.org/10.31009/intermaps.2026.guia

Masi, B., & Rodó-Zárate, M. (2025). The intersectional right to the city: Non-binary and trans people navigating gender, race, and class in Barcelona. Urban Studies Journal. 

The concept of the right to the city has been central in urban studies and social justice movements, yet it frequently neglects the intersectional inequalities experienced by marginalized groups. This article examines the right to the city through the lens of intersectionality, focusing on how overlapping oppressions related to gender, race, class, and migration status shape urban experiences. Using a qualitative methodology of in-depth interviews and Relief Maps with 30 non-cisgender individuals living in Barcelona, we explore how multiple social positions intersect to produce specific forms of exclusion and negotiation within urban space, considering both public and private spaces as interconnected sites where these exclusions and negotiations unfold, challenging spatial hierarchies in urban studies. By foregrounding how these categories intersect, our research moves beyond essentialist understandings of marginalization and challenges rigid binaries of inclusion and exclusion. Instead, it highlights the complex, shifting, and sometimes contradictory ways individuals navigate urban life. In doing so, we position the right to the city within broader debates in urban theory, particularly the tensions between more economic perspectives and those rooted in feminist, postcolonial, and queer critiques. This perspective is particularly relevant in Southern Europe, where colonial histories, migration, and racialization follow different logics than those dominant in Anglo-American urban theory. We argue for a reimagined right to the city that dismantles exclusionary hierarchies by embracing the relational nature of urban experiences, recognizing that belonging and access to the city are shaped by a complex interplay of social categories.

Read the article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00420980251383334

Coll-Planell, M. (2025). Repensar el canvi climàtic des de la interseccionalitat: aportacions, potencialitats i reptes [Rethinking Climate Change through Intersectionality: Contributions, Potential and Challenges]. Documents d’Anàlisi Geogràfica, 71(3), 561–584. 

La interseccionalitat s’està consolidant com una teoria clau per estudiar la dimensió social del canvi climàtic. Aquest article revisa de forma crítica els principals treballs acadèmics existents que utilitzen un marc analític interseccional per facilitar la comprensió de l’emergència climàtica, ressaltant-ne les aportacions, les potencialitats i els reptes principals. La interseccionalitat permet entendre el canvi climàtic des d’una perspectiva sistèmica, posant en relleu el rol de les estructures socials en la configuració de les experiències climàtiques. Aquesta teoria evidencia com l’emergència climàtica afecta de manera desigual individus i grups socials segons les seves posicions en les estructures de poder, visibilitzant les experiències dels col·lectius més marginalitzats. Així, la interseccionalitat s’erigeix com una eina fonamental per avançar cap a la justícia climàtica. Malgrat l’avenç dels darrers anys en els estudis interseccionals sobre canvi climàtic, l’article apunta la necessitat d’expandir la recerca cap a nous terrenys empírics i cap a noves perspectives metodològiques per consolidar aquest camp emergent.

Read the article: https://dag.revista.uab.cat/article/view/v71-n3-coll 


Souza, J. I. L., & Rodó-Zárate, M. (2024). A spiral validation process: Applying qualitative, feminist and intersectional perspectives to the validation of an online methodological tool. In Proceedings of the XII Latin American Congress of Political Science, Lisbon. Editorial ALACIP

This article presents the validation process of the ReliefMaps+, an online methodological tool designed to study social inequalities collecting quantitative, qualitative and spatial data, aiming to understand the reproduction and impact of structural inequalities in daily life. Our objective is to address a gap in the literature by detailing our validation process, which aligns with qualitative, feminists and intersectional paradigms. We detail the spiral validation method we created, contrasting it with positivist approaches. This process consisted of three phases: a survey, discussion groups, and pilot tests, intersected by review meetings with the INTERMAPS team, the website development company, and the ethical and legal advisors. This iterative process incorporated the selected frameworks, with continuous revisions based on feedback from experts, participants and others in each phase, which contributed to refining the tool. The validation emphasized the concepts of positionality and reflexivity, recognizing that feedback is context-based and shaped by each person's intersectional social positions from which they produce knowledge. The findings underscore the importance of a non-linear, reflexive validation approach, highlighting the tool’s adaptability, inclusivity, and ethical considerations. The results show that ReliefMaps+ and its validation process provides a methodological framework for feminists and intersectional research, offering a model for future methodological innovations grounded in these perspectives.

Read the article: https://alacip.org/cong24/24-souza-zarate-24.pdf 

 

Pascual-Bordas, J. (2024). Desafiar la norma a casa: experiències i estratègies de joves LGBT+ a la casa familiar i a la casa pròpia a la comarca del Bages. Documents d’Anàlisi Geogràfica.

La recerca en geografia s’ha centrat prioritàriament en l’espai públic, amb una absència d’estudis sobre les relacions de poder a l’escala domèstica. La llar és un espai primordial per construir la identitat, per això resulta clau posar-hi el focus per comprendre com operen les estructures socials de poder en la vida de les persones. Partint d’això, l’objectiu d’aquesta recerca és estudiar l’experiència de l’edat, el gènere i l’orientació sexual en diferents espais de casa per veure de quina manera es reprodueixen les relacions de poder quotidianament. A través d’una metodologia qualitativa, els Relief Maps, s’analitzen les experiències de vint-i-set joves LGBT+ de la comarca del Bages. Els resultats mostren com l’adultisme, el cissexisme i l’heterocentrisme operen configurant les vivències de les joves LGBT+ a casa. L’estudi destaca la centralitat dels espais domèstics en l’anàlisi de desigualtats socials.

Read the article: https://dag.revista.uab.cat/article/view/v70-n2-pascual/900-pdf-ca 

 

Pascual-Bordas, J. (2024). Resisting and transgressing cisheteronormativity at home: LGBT+ youths’ active strategies. Sexualities.

Many of the struggles and advances in LGBT+ rights are fought in domestic spaces. However, the political and emotional complexity of the home in relation to gender and sexual dissidence has received limited attention. This research aims to explore the discrimination and coping strategies of young LGBT+ youth in their family and personal home. Through a qualitative methodology, I examine how 27 LGBT+ youth from Bages (Catalonia) experience different home spaces according to their age, gender, and sexual orientation. The results show adultism and pressure to conform to cisheteronormative expectations at the family home. However, these norms dissolve in the personal home, allowing the free development of their LGBT+ identities. The study reveals the resistance and transformation strategies they use to tackle cisheteronormativity, highlighting home as a place of politics, negotiation, power, and complex emotions.

Read the article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13634607241248892 

 

Font-Casaseca, N., & Rodó-Zárate, M. (2024). From the margins of Geographical Information Systems: Limitations, challenges, and proposals. Progress in Human Geography.

Some of the most exciting progress to address central limitations in GIS is currently originating from the margins of cartographic traditions. This article explores the potential of a proactive engagement with mapping technologies from peripheral positions, such as humanist, feminist, decolonial, queer, and black perspectives, to overcome what we identify as five intrinsic challenges of GIS: the representation of place; emotions; scales; time and change; and relational approaches. The proposals deal with specific concerns that do not fit in existing GISystems and suggest how a creative engagement with mapping technologies further expands our understanding of what GIS could be.

Read the article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03091325241240231 

 

Pascual-Bordas, J. (2023). The domestic bathroom: a strongbox for gender performativity and transgression. Social & Cultural Geography, 1-19. 

Public bathrooms are key sites for understanding gender identities, gender expressions, and sexual orientations that are out of the norm. Research has shown that they are places of discrimination but they also provide opportunities for transgression. Domestic bathrooms, however, have not received much attention. Through the experiences of 27 LGBT+ youth from Bages, an interior region of Catalonia, this research shows how the bathroom at home is a significant place where gender and sexual norms are reproduced and transgressed. Using a qualitative methodology, I examine how LGBT+ youth experience the domestic bathroom, both in the family home and their own home, according to their age, gender, and sexual orientation. The domestic bathroom is shown to be relevant in terms of gender performativity and sexuality and a place of privacy where gender expression is tested and sexual pleasure is enjoyed. The study sheds light on the understanding of how social norms around gender and sexuality work, destabilizing the conception of cisheterosexuality as something innate.

Read the article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14649365.2023.2257644 

 

Rodó-Zárate, M. (2023). Intersectionality and the spatiality of emotions in feminist research. The Professional Geographer, 75(4), 676-681.

In intersectionality studies, the lived experience of inequalities has been a central concern since its origins. Crenshaw referred to Black women’s experiences of oppression as the phenomenon to be studied and the reason why new theoretical tools, such as intersectionality, were needed. Here I approach intersectionality and lived experience from an emotional and geographic perspective, focusing on how spatiality is lived and constructed through emotions and on their role in (re)producing intersectional dynamics. I rely on Ahmed’s (Feminist Theory, Vol. 8 [2007], 149–68) conceptualization of (dis)comforts and the inhabitability of places by different bodies to show the genuinely spatial character of emotions. Applying the conceptualization to an intersectional framework, I develop a differentiation of (dis)comforts in relation to geometries of power and argue that emotions and their spatialities can be used as pointers to intersectional inequalities. I illustrate the theoretical proposals through the Relief Maps as a tool for the collection, analysis, and visualization of the social, geographic, and emotional dimensions of intersectional inequalities and reflect on how feminist research methods could consider emotions for studying intersectional dynamics.

Read the article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00330124.2022.2075406 

 

Pascual Bordas, J. (2022). Resilience in the face of heteronormativity: Experiences of non-heterosexual young women in the family home in Manresa, Catalonia. In Mapping LGBTQ Spaces and Places: A Changing World (pp. 595-612). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Widening the research of the LGBTI+ community’s experiences in private spaces is essential to provide more data about the state of the art so it can contribute to the identification of the violence LGBTI+ youth experience in these spaces. The present chapter studies a group of young cis women of non-normative sexuality, from an intracategorical complexity approach, to investigate their experiences in their family homes in Manresa, a medium-sized city in Catalonia. The reporting of these women brings to light the discrimination and inequality they experience due to their condition as non-heterosexual young women. Additionally, it portrays the strategies they develop to face these situations. The results show that the family home is based on heteronormative standards and that young non-heterosexual women use resilience strategies within it. This chapter shows the discrimination and inequality that lesbians, bisexuals and diverse sexuality women undergo and resist throughout their youth at home.

Read the article: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-03792-4_35