Eleni Katrini

Eleni Katrini is an architect and postdoctoral researcher as a Marie Curie Fellow (Horizon 2020) at the School of Architectural Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens. Her research, “Places of Togetherness,” delves into the relationship between public space and social cohesion. She received her PhD from the Carnegie Mellon University in 2019. She is a scholar of the Onassis Foundation (2014-2017), the Gerondelis Foundation (2013), and the Fulbright Foundation (2011). She has worked in various fields, from local government bodies to the private sector, as well as in academic institutions and non-profit organizations, always with participatory and strategic urban planning as her main objective. As Senior Regeneration Manager in Newham Municipality's renovation department in London from 2019 to 2021, she directed the Newham High Streets program, creating strategic plans for the town's urban centers, based on research and participation. The foundations laid by the program helped the Municipality raise 20 million pounds in funding for the support of local communities and businesses.

From 2017 to 2018, she was research director at the Every One Every Day program as a member of the Participatory City Foundation in London, devising the structures for the assessment of an innovative resident participation program. In 2015, she co-founded Vacant Home Tour in the US, a community program that seeks to address in a participatory manner the issue of abandoned buildings. The project was funded by the Fels Institute of Government, as one of the four candidates shortlisted for the National Public Policy Challenge. She has taught on urban ecology, space, and urban commons at the Schools of Architecture of Sheffield University and Carnegie Mellon respectively. She has conducted research on issues of urban commons, social economy, urban ecology, and participatory planning, on which she has published articles and organized and presented papers at international conferences.