Dafni Riga is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano. Born and raised in Athens, Greece, she holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris – Val de Seine, a Master’s degree in Architecture from Politecnico di Milano, and a Ph.D. in Urban Planning, Design, and Policy (awarded cum laude), from Politecnico di Milano. 

Her doctoral research, supported by the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, explored the person-environment relationship in human mobilities, with a focus on environmental experience during leisure activities in non-urban contexts. Under this framework, she has examined the slow tourism and slow travel paradigms as catalysts for sustainable mobility and leisure practices. Her international and interdisciplinary perspective was further enriched during her Visiting Research period at PEARL (Person-Environment-Activity Research Laboratory) in the Department of Civil, Geomatic, and Environmental Engineering at University College London. 

As a Post-doctoral Researcher, Dafni investigates international excellence in doctoral training on urban studies, particularly in relation to territorial fragility. Her work aims to identify best educational practices, future research directions, and opportunities for collaboration between academia and the professional research community. 

Passionate about interdisciplinary thinking, she integrates insights from the social sciences, such as environmental psychology and sociology, into urban design research. Her research interests revolve around the exploration of: innovative, interdisciplinary, and human-scale approaches to addressing the socio-economic and environmental impacts of territorial fragility; the role of academic knowledge production in education and research, particularly its potential to become more impactful, democratic, and socially inclusive; the use of self-reflexivity as a method for effective communication within and beyond academia.

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