De Rosa Annalinda

PhD in Design. Researcher and Professor at the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano. She is a member of the Polimi DESIS Lab within the international DESIS Network (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability).

Her research lies at the intersection of participatory design and relational design, investigating how design intervenes in the construction of relationships, forms of participation, and processes of socio-spatial transformation. She works primarily within multi-actor systems and across urban and rural contexts, with particular attention to public spaces, the situated dimensions of place, and their temporalities.

Her research integrates feminist, decolonial, intersectional, and antispeciesist perspectives, in dialogue with posthuman thought, to critically interrogate the power relations that shape which subjects, forms of knowledge, and forms of agency become visible and politically intelligible within design processes. From this perspective, she investigates situated knowledge, care, and interdependence, while developing approaches for mapping power dynamics and critically examining participatory processes.

Methodologically, she combines field-based, participatory, and place-centred research with speculative and future-oriented methods, using design both to investigate existing socio-political configurations and to explore alternative scenarios, counter-narratives, and possibilities.

She has been the co-coordinator of the research projects "Trame Locali: Sustainable and Narrative Paths of Basso Monferrato" (2025, PNRR CHANGES – Cultural Heritage Active Innovation for Sustainable Society) and “Human Cities/SMOTIES, Creative works with small and remote places” (2020-24, Creative Europe), and collaborated in the projects "ONFOODS - Research and innovation network on food and nutrition Sustainability, Safety and Security" (2023-26, PNRR NextGenerationEU), “DoCS4Design - Doctoral Courses System 4 Design” (2020-23, Erasmus+), “Human Cities, Challenging the city scale” (2014-18, Creative Europe) and “campUS, Incubation and settings for social practices” (2014-16, awarded with the Compasso D’Oro in 2018). In 2014/2016, she collaborated with the European consortium GIDE – Group for International Design Education.

Over the past fifteen years, she has carried out research and teaching activities (bachelor and master studios) as a Visiting to design universities, notably at TU Delft (2025), Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano (2019-2024), Federal University of Juiz de Fora (2023), Universidad de Navarra (2019), University of the Aegean (2018), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (2017), College of Design & Innovation of Tongji University (2017), and Middlesex University in London (2017).