Estela Schaffner is a scientific collaborator at the TRANSFORM Institute in Fribourg, Switzerland. Since 2023 she is also a PhD candidate in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Geneva, jointly supervised by the School of Engineering and Architecture of Fribourg (HEIA-Fribourg).
She studied Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Tirana and, after graduating, worked for five years as a Junior Architect in Tirana, Albania. She was awarded an Erasmus+ scholarship to pursue an Erasmus Mundus MSc in Sustainable Territorial Development where she graduated in 2019 with a master’s thesis exploring the potential of the Paris participatory budgeting to address social inequalities in low-income neighborhoods.
Her doctoral research investigates the potential of small-scale urban interventions to enhance urban heat resilience, with a particular focus on how local, targeted interventions developed through consequent participatory processes can contribute to more climate-resilient urban environments.