Albena Kostadinova Yaneva

Albena Yaneva is a sociologist and architectural theorist whose research crosses the boundaries of science studies, cognitive anthropology, architectural theory, and political philosophy. Prior to joining Politecnico di Torino, Yaneva worked at the University of Manchester, UK for 18 years where she led the Manchester Architecture Research Group (MARG). She is Full Professor and the author of seven monographs: The Making of a Building (2009), Made by the OMA: An Ethnography of Design (2009), Mapping Controversies in Architecture (2012), Five Ways to Make Architecture Political: An Introduction to the Politics of Design Practice (2017), Crafting History: Archiving and the Quest for Architectural Legacy (2020), Latour for Architects (2022), Architecture After Covid (2023). She co-authored The New Architecture of Science: Learning from Graphene (2020) with the Nobel Laureate in Physics Sir Kostya S. Novoselov. Yaneva has held the prestigious Lise Meitner Visiting Chair in Architecture at the University of Lund, Sweden as well as Visiting Professorships at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Princeton School of Architecture, and Parsons School of Design, The New School. She has delivered more than 200 invited lectures at prestigious universities, 50 of which were keynote addresses at major conferences. Yaneva holds a DEA from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and a PhD from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris where she worked alongside Bruno Latour. Her work has been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Thai, Polish, Turkish and Japanese. She is the recipient of the RIBA President’s award for outstanding university-based research.