Architect, urban researcher. She holds a degree in Architecture (2003) from the Lisbon School of Architecture - University of Lisbon, and a Master of Architecture (2010). She completed her PhD in Urbanism (2017), focused on the challenges of urban interventions on self-built places in the search for spatial justice. Since 2020, Joana Pestana Lages is a researcher at DINÂMIA'CET - IUL, Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies of ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon. She is also a research member of CIEG (Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies) Institute of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lisbon (ISCSP-ULisboa), the only Portuguese centre explicitly dedicated to gender studies. Joana is interested in interdisciplinary research crossing Architecture and the Social Sciences, action research and participatory projects that include codesigning. Her main topics of interest are housing precarity, the right to housing, urban diversity, and spatial inequality. In 2022, Joana started an FCT funded project as PI, 'Care(4)Housing - A care through design approach to address housing precarity in Portugal'.
Since 2002 Joana worked as an architect in Barcelona (WMA), London (dRMM Architects), Lisbon (Promontório) or Genoa (Renzo Piano Building Workshop), before founding her studio, Estúdio Periférico. In 2017, she co-founded 'Mulheres na Arquitectura' (Women in Architecture), aiming to reflect and act on gender equity regarding the production of architecture, city, and territory. She is currently president of the association.