Architect and urban researcher. She holds a degree in Architecture (2003) and a Master of Architecture (2010) from the Lisbon School of Architecture, University of Lisbon, and a PhD in Urbanism (2017), focused on spatial justice and urban interventions in self-built territories. Since 2020, Joana Pestana Lages has been a researcher at DINÂMIA’CET–Iscte, where she is an integrated researcher and Deputy Director. 

Her work is interdisciplinary, bridging Architecture and the Social Sciences, with a strong focus on action research, research-by-design, and participatory and co-design methodologies. Her main research interests include housing precarity, housing justice, urban diversity, spatial inequalities, and care-based approaches to dwelling. She is the Principal Investigator of the FCT-funded project Care(4)Housing – A Care Through Design Approach to Address Housing Precarity (2022–2025) and the PI of the ERC Starting Grant HOUSINGFREEDOM – Housing as a Tool for Freedom: A Future Away from Incarceration (2026-2030).

Alongside her academic career, Joana has professional experience as an architect since 2002, having worked in Barcelona (Willy Müller Architects), London (dRMM Architects), Lisbon (Promontório), and Genoa (Renzo Piano Building Workshop), before founding her own practice, Estúdio Periférico, operating at the intersection of architecture, research, and socially engaged urban practice. In 2017, she co-founded Mulheres na Arquitectura (Women in Architecture) and has served as its President since 2022.