Dr Anna Pagani is a Senior Lecturer in Engineering at King’s College London. Her research interests lie at the intersection of systems thinking, housing studies, and degrowth. In her work, she mobilises systems- and transdisciplinary approaches to co-design interventions aimed at providing housing for all within planetary boundaries.

Prior to joining King’s, Anna worked at the UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering (Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources), where she is currently an Honorary Research Fellow. During her time at UCL, she led a research project funded by a fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation. The project engaged with key players in the English social housing sector to map the systemic issues of social housing provision, collect perspectives on what constitutes healthy, sustainable, and just housing, and discuss possible ways to transform the current system towards that goal (see main findings).

Anna holds a BSc and a double MSc degree in Architecture and Building Engineering with honours (Politecnico di Torino, Politecnico di Milano, Alta Scuola Politecnica). She earned her PhD with distinction from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). At EPFL, she has worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Laboratory on Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems (HERUS), and at the Habitat Research Centre (HRC), where she served as a member of the Executive Board of the research field ‘Healthy Habitats’.

Her teaching experience spans systems thinking, housing health and sustainability, sustainability assessment, and participatory approaches. She has co-led the course 'Systems Thinking in the Age of Transition' in the MAS ETH EPFL in Urban and Territorial Design, as well as the EPFL MSc course 'Sustainability Assessment of Urban Systems'. She has supervised dissertations in various fields, including environmental design and engineering, architecture, and health and wellbeing.

Her work has been acknowledged through various awards. Her doctoral dissertation was honoured with the EPFL Architecture and Sciences of the City Doctoral Programme Thesis Distinction (top 8% of theses). She was the speaker for the 2024 Athena Lecture Series at ETH Zurich, following in the footsteps of internationally recognised women in the field. In 2024, her work was chosen for the Plenary Session of the International System Dynamics Conference (top 2% of submissions).

Anna is a member of the Postgrowth Cities Coalition and the Post-Growth Planning cluster of the UCL Bartlett School of Planning. She is also affiliated with several societies (System Dynamics Society, European Network for Housing Research, Housing Studies Association, International Degrowth Network), including the multidisciplinary built environment think tank ‘The Edge’. 

More broadly, she engages with a network of researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, artists, and residents in London and internationally. In this context, she is open to collaborations that place particular emphasis on working at intersections, to challenge and redesign systems towards justice.

 

Research Interests

• Systems thinking
• Transdisciplinarity
• Participatory approaches
• Housing and the Built environment
• Degrowth and Post-growth
• Health, Sustainability, and Justice

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