Francesca Vita is a post-doctoral researcher at DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte within the ERC project “Architecture, Colonialism and Labour” coordinated by Ana Vaz Milheiro, and an invited lecturer at the University of the Algarve. She holds a PhD in Architecture (cum laude, 2023) from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, which deepens into the topics of colonial legacy and domestic space in contemporary Guinea-Bissau. Since 2018, she has been disseminating her studies on colonial legacy, domestic architecture and practices of usage in international conferences, both as presenter and chair of session, being particularly interest in exploring counter-histories of architecture from late colonial to contemporary times. In 2022, she was awarded with the Eleni Bastea Award from IASTE, the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments, for the best article presented about urban studies.

From 2016 to 2021, she taught the annual-subject of Dwelling Culture in the interior design bachelor course at the ESAD (Matosinhos, PT) and she has been the art director of the documentary film cycle DESIGNAgorà in Porto (PT) on design and architecture for two consecutive editions (2019-2021).

Her research interests include counterhistories of architecture and the legacy of colonialism in the built environment; the relationship between nature exploitation and design domain during late colonial period; construction, labour and architecture in colonial and present days.