Who we are

Francesca Berni

She/Her

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at DAStU Politecnico di Milano, Francesca Berni is an architect and PhD architect. Her practice is placed at the intersection of architecture, art and landscape. In 2021, she was an Enel Italian Fellow in Architecture, Urban Design, and Landscape Architecture at the American Academy in Rome. In 2020, she held the Ph.D. title with co-supervised thesis “The Shapes of Water – Discourse around the Architectural Project for a Landscape Reactivation in Fujian Province” (Politecnico di Milano – Shanghai Jiao Tong University). Through Chinese and European cultures, she explores the notion of landscape and its implications and potentialities in the space we dwell. Different media and techniques support her research, setting a dialogue between analog and digital. She works with installations (Streetscapes, Spazi Aperti, NAHR, tack Communities of Tacit Knowledge), writings (Territorio, Industria delle Costruzioni, IIC) and drawings (Domus web, Erbario. Una guida del Selvatico a Milano) encouraging the visitors’/readers’ perception and awareness.

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Irene Bianchi

She/Her

Assistant Professor in Urban Planning at DAStU, Politecnico di Milano, where she obtained a PhD in Urban Planning, Design and Policy. Irene previously carried out research activities at the University IUAV of Venice (2014-2015); Berlin Technical University (2016-2017); King’s College London (2018); and the International University of Catalunya (2021). Irene is a member of the Executive Board of the Urban Resilience Research Network and part of the BIARI Alumni Network (Brown University). Her main research interest lies at the intersection between decision theory and (urban) sustainability transition, with a focus on governance dynamics at the interface between “niches” of innovation and experimentation and policy-making processes.  

irene.bianchi@polimi.it

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Grazia Concilio

She/Her

Engineer and Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the DAStU Politecnico di Milano, where she works on the theme of digital innovation and transformation of urban contexts. Grazia holds a PhD in “Economic Evaluation for Sustainability” at the University of Naples Federico II. She has carried out research activities at RWTH in Aachen, Germany (1995), at IIASA in Laxenburg, Austria (1998), and at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada (2002). She has been and is a team leader as well as coordinator of several international research projects (VII framework program, Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe). She is the author of several articles and volumes.

grazia.concilio@polimi.it

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Valeria Fedeli

She/Her

PhD in Planning and public Policies at IUAV, she is currently Full professor and vice-coordinator of the PhD program in Urban Planning, Policy and Design at Politecnico di Milano, Coordinator of Progetto di Eccellenza Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani, in charge of the foundation of the Competence Center on anti-fragility. Her research interests deal with processes of regional urbanization and related governance challenges, innovation of policies and actors; strategic planning; inter-municipal cooperation; national and EU urban policy and agenda. She has been President of the European Urban Research Association (2021-2017); Member of AESOP Teaching Excellence Board and of the Scientific Board of Urban@it- Centro nazionale di studi per le politiche urbane. During the last ten years, she was project manager of the PRIN 2010 (2012-2015) “Post-metropolitan territories as emergent forms of urban space: coping with sustainability, habitability, and governance”. She has been coordinator of two ESPON EGTC (2019-2021) targeted analysis projects, MISTA and IMAGINE both dedicated to explore processes of socio-economic-spatial and institutional change in large urban regions in EU.

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Maryam Karimi

She/Her

Assistant Professor (fixed-term) in Urban and Regional Planning at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. She hold a PhD in Urban Planning, Design, and Policy. Her interdisciplinary research agenda investigates how citizens and cities learn to be smarter and more intelligent towards the direction of inclusivity and sustainability. Her research interest centres on urban innovation, knowledge production, and the use of technologies and their effects on urban policy and social organisations. In her recent role as a coordination team member and researcher for several EU projects, Maryam has actively engaged with the socio-technological dimensions of intelligent cities, experimentation and living laboratories initiative, organisational learning, digital transformation across the public sector and migration studies. Her academic background includes an MSc in Design from the University of Massachusetts and an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Colorado Denver. 

maryam.karimi@polimi.it

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Talita Medina

She/Her

Architect and urban planner, works on urban transformation projects on the small and medium scales and collaborates on international research projects exploring design-enabled urban innovation.

Anna Moro

She/Her

Architect and PhD in Urban and Environmental Planning, she is a researcher in urbanism at DAStU Politecnico di Milano, where she teaches Urban Design. Co-founder of a team of architects (gruarchitetti), since 2008 she has developed, both professionally and within the university, various experiences of planning and design at multiple scales, working on general strategies, visions, urban guidelines, masterplans, public space design and agenda. Recent research activities are devoted to exploring an interdisciplinary understanding and co-design of the urban space, at the crossing between architecture, artistic disciplines, first-hand experience and civic involvement in transformation.

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Michelangelo Secchi

He/Him

Postdoctoral researcher at DAStU Politecnico di Milano, with a background in humanities and political sciences, he has been a fellow researcher at the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra and has over 15 years of professional experience as consultant for the public sector. His research focuses on the sociotechnical dimensions of digital transformation and the effects of such transformation on local governance and democratic processes.

michelangelo.secchi@polimi.it

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Ilaria Tosoni

She/Her

Planner and urban designer. Since 2017 she is a post-doctoral research fellow at Politecnico di Milano. From 2006 to 2013 she worked as research assistant at ETH Zurich, where she also obtained a PHD in Civil Engineering with a dissertation on Spatial strategies and actions design. Her research work embraces methods and instruments for collaborative design processes and socio-technical transition theory. She spent her professional life between academia and public administrations where she worked as a planning consultant.

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