Dr Luisa Bravo is a distinguished public space scholar, activist, and cultural entrepreneur, bringing over two decades of expertise as both an academic and practitioner. Her work has taken her to over 30 countries, where she has conducted research and lectured at leading universities, such as University of Bologna (Italy), University of California Berkeley (USA), Lebanese American University (Lebanon), The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong SAR), Queensland University of Technology (Australia), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), while contributing to major UN summits, including Habitat III (Quito, 2016), multiple World Urban Forums (2018–2024), and UN high-level meetings in New York (2017, 2022). Since 2013, she has held the position of Adjunct Professor of Urban Design at the University of Florence in Italy.
Dr Bravo holds a strong record of academic publications in Italian, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese. She has been the recipient of prestigious grants and awards, such as the Marco Polo Scholarship granted by the University of Bologna (2012) and the Australia Endeavour Executive Award, the Australian Government’s internationally competitive, merit-based fellowship program aimed at bringing leading researchers and professionals to Australia (2018). She has served as a speaker at major international conferences in more than thirty countries.
Through her interdisciplinary work connecting academia, policy, and practice, Dr Bravo has become a prominent voice championing public space culture and civic participation via research, education, and global cooperation. She serves European and international institutions as an expert evaluator and advisor, contributing her expertise to programs, including Horizon Europe, EIT Culture & Creativity, European Prize for Urban Public Space, Safe and Sound Cities, and the Global Platform for the Right to the City, as well as Municipalities and Regional Governments. Her lecture, “Stand up for Public Space!” has been included in the UN-Habitat’s Global Urban Lectures (2017), one of the UN-Habitat’s most widely shared online outreach initiatives, which gathers expertise from renowned international scholars and professionals who excel in their fields.
Her works have been exhibited at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (South Korea, 2019), at the International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale (Italy, 2021) and at the Biennale dello Stretto (Italy, 2024), where she curated the section on “Public Space / Relations”.