Dr Francesca Lanz

Assistant Professor

Department: Architecture and Built Environment

Francesca Lanz is an Assistant Professor of Interior Architecture at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, where she is co-lead for the Research Group People and Places and member of the Athena Swan Departmental Self Assesment Team (DSAT).

Dr Lanz held lectureship and research positions as a visiting scholar at various prestigious European universities, including Politecnico di Milano (2010-2020), University of Amsterdam (2018), Newcastle University (2019-2021), and Lincoln University (2021-2022). She holds an MSc in Architecture and a PhD in Interior Architecture and Exhibition Design, both awarded magna cum laude by Politecnico di Milano; she is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and obtained the Italian National Scientific Qualification as Associate Professor of Architecture with a subject specialization in Interior Architecture in 2018.

With over 15 years of experience in teaching and researching architecture, Dr. Lanz is a leading international researcher with an interdisciplinary profile lying at the intersection of architecture, museography, exhibition design, and memory, museum, and heritage studies. Her research innovatively combines these diverse disciplinary approaches, theories, and practices to explore the role of the built environment and museums in contemporary societies, with a particular interest in neglected heritages and memories. This is evident in her work on cities, museums, migration, and the adaptive reuse of sites of difficult history, including prisons and asylums.

On these topics, she has a wide track record of publications, international research funding success, impact, and collaborative working. She recently completed a Marie Sklodoswska Curie Individual Fellowship, focussing on the reuse of former mental asylums into mind museums. She is leading the research group ARCH [Adaptive Reuse and Cultural Heritage] within the international Scientific Research Network READ.ADAPT.REUSE. –Reading and transforming the As Found (2024-2029) involving 15 European Universities coordinated by Hasselt University (BE) and funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). She is a member of the EU-funded COST Action CA22159 – National, International and Transnational Histories of Healthcare, 1850-2000 (EuroHealthHist).

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Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

With a background in architecture, primarily focused on interior architecture, Dr Lanz expertise expands to intersect different disciplines, including museography, exhibition design, and memory, museum, and heritage studies. Combining these diverse disciplinary approaches, theories, and practices, Dr Lanz has delivered pioneering research in architecture and heritage studies, specifically focusing on adaptive reuse, neglected heritages and contemporary museums.

This has resulted in numerous high-quality outputs including a Routledge-published research monograph on Mind Museums: Former Asylusm and the Heritage of Mental Health, published in 2024 by Routldge.

She has over a decade of experience in developing and working on cutting-edge funded research projects in the field of architecture and heritage. Among these shr contributed as Co-Investigator and Dissemination Leader for the the collaborative research projects MeLa (EU-FP7, 2011–2015) on museums and migration, and TRACES (EU-H2020, 2016-2019) on contentious heritage and creative co-productions; she have been Co-Principal Investigator for the collaborative research project en/counter/points (HERA, 2019–22) on public spaces in a time of migrations, and Principal Investigator for the research project ReMIND (MSCA-IF, 2019–22) an interdisciplinary study on the adaptive reuse of former asylums into "mind museums".

Alongside these and other funded research programmes, Dr Lanz has been involved in several design-based research projects, and I has been appointed for scientific consultancies developing research-informed solutions to real-world problems, engaging with external stakeholders and contributing to stakeholder-focused knowledge exchange. These include a consultancy for the adaptive reuse and musealisation of the former prison at Fornelli for the Parco Nazionale dell'Asinara (2018-2019); a scientific consultancy on the "City museums global mapping and definition" special project by CAMOC, the International Council of Museums committee for city museums (2020-2023); the participation as a designer in a pilot study supported by the Milan Municipality and UNICEF for the refurbishing of a primary school in Milan (2017-2018); and the design contribution in the project for the musealisation and adaptive reuse of the Marchiondi Institute in Milan, funded by the bank foundation CARIPLO (2009-2010).

Dr Lanz regularly reviews for various international accademic journals including Museums and Society, Journal of Architecture and International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. She is a Subject Editor for the scientific journal The Heritage, Memory and Conflict Journal and a Section Editor for The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Dr. Lanz is also a member of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Talent Peer Review College, Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Peer Review College and a registered expert for EU project review.

Dr Lanz is a member of the Board of Experts for the Architectural Urban Interior Design (AUID) Ph.D. Programme. At Northumbria she currently is principal supervisor for 1 PhD, secondo supervisor for 1 PhD, subject expert and PGR mentor for the Pro:NE project to widen access and participation for racially minoritised ethnic students and staff in postgraduate research. She has supervised 2 PhD to completion:

Dissonant Memories in the Post-Soviet Space: Comparative Analysis of Newly Established Museums of Political Histories in the Post-Soviet Countries (1991-2016) by Dr. Maria Mikaelyan (Co-Supervisors: Prof. Luca Basso Peressut, Dr. Francesca Lanz, 2015 – 2020).
Designing Preservation. Testing an architectural approach to UNESCO tools for heritage-context valorization, by Dr. Sara Ghirardini (Principal Supervisor: Pier Federico Caliari, Secondo supervisor Dr Francesca Lanz, 2019 – 2024)

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Mind Museums: Former Asylums and the Heritage of Mental Health, Lanz, F. 5 Mar 2024
Adaptive reuse: a critical review, Lanz, F., Pendlebury, J. Sep 2022, In: Journal of Architecture
The building as a palimpsest: heritage, memory and adaptive reuse beyond intervention, Lanz, F. 15 Feb 2024, In: Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development
Exhibitions and Design: A Perspective on the Project of Museum Display, Lanz, F., Leveratto, J. 24 Apr 2023, Visiting the Art Museum, Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan
Adaptive reuse, Plevoets, B., Lanz, F. 1 Dec 2023, Elgar Encyclopedia in Urban and Regional Planning and Design, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Invited talk: Conference paper: “Mind Museums: stories, places, museums and the heritage of mental heath” 2024
Participating in a conference, workshop, ...: On Drawing 2024
Invited talk: Keynote presentation 2023
Invited talk: Invited panellist for the Special session “Remembering imprisonment: memory at sites of incarceration” 2023
Oral presentation: Conference Paper: “Memory Anchors. Remembering Mind Museums” 2023
Oral presentation: Keynote presentation 2023
Consultancy: Scientific Adviser / Coordinator for the “City Museum Global Mapping Project” 2019

PGR Supervision

Vincenza Tafaro Community involvement in design processes for the adaptive reuse of difficult heritage sites: the case of former 19th-century prisons in England. Start Date: 01/10/2023