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Welcome to LXNIGHTS![caption id="attachment_107" align="alignright" width="300"] To blog or not to blog? That was the main topic for discussion in our last meeting[/caption]This blog is a collaborative research venture linked to a research project called "LXnights Project. Nightlife, Gentrification and the Studentification of Lisbon's nights. Exploring New Forms of Urban Inequality in Times of Crisis". We are a team of young researchers (anthropologists, geographers, sociologists and ethnomusicologists) linked to different Portuguese research institutions: the CESNOVA /FCSH-UNL, the CIES/ISCTE-IUL and the INET-MD/FCSH-UNL. The LXnights project started to take shape one year ago when we realized that our individual research projects shared a common concern about the kind of transformations that the city of Lisbon is recently experiencing, particularly in its historical centre.Hence we decided to put together a research project that takes the urban night as a lens through which to analyze the dynamics of multifaceted gentrification in four inner-city areas in Lisbon: Bairro Alto, Alfama, Cais do Sodré and the Mouraria. These four areas have experienced significant transformations in their urban fabric over the last two decades, and the development of new consumption-led night-scapes has served as a catalyst for those transformations. Ultimately, the goel of this project is to gain a better understanding of how the different actors involved in the transformation of the urban nightlife negotiate common interests, develop strategic alliances and resolve conflicts that arise from this process. As a result we seek to identify, map and analyze the spatial and social changes that result from this “new” urban nightscapes that are gradually permeating these formerly degraded, social instable and insecure places. In this blog we will be posting about the progress of the research. Stay tune!