Adriana Laura Massidda is a lecturer in architecture at the Leicester School of Architecture, De Montfort University, and a non-stipendiary visiting fellow at the LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre.

Adriana’s current research focuses on the environmental history of two housing estates which were constructed on former sewage farms (Beaumont Leys, in Leicester, and St Raphael’s, in London). More specifically, her project explores the ecological and political implications of transforming agricultural land into waste-processing plants and ultimately residential sites within a rapidly-transforming urban fringe, as well as the ways in which this intertwines with residents’ experiences and wellbeing. In a follow-up project, Adriana will explore the potentialities and limitations of phyto- and bio-remediation to mitigate the remaining contamination at these sites, especially through collective landscape design. 

Prior to this, Adriana’s doctoral and post-doctoral research engaged with self-organisation, human agency, and socio-ecological transformations in Buenos Aires shantytowns during the period 1956-1972. In 2019, she expanded this research to look at female leaderships in Lima’s pueblos jóvenes from the 1950s to the 1990s as a Canning House and King’s College London Fellow. She is in the process of transforming this work into a single-authored monograph and has published several pieces condensing specific aspects of this research. One of Adriana's most recent research articles, 'Shantytowns, Housing and State Order', has been shortlisted for the Royal Institute of British Architects President's Award for Research. 

Adriana received her architectural degree from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she grew up. After seven years practising as an architect, Adriana completed her PhD thesis at the University of Cambridge (King’s College, 2016) and went on to become a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre of Urban and Regional Studies, Buenos Aires (2017-19). Adriana has taught at University College London, the University of Cambridge, the University of Buenos Aires, and the University of Flores.