Dr Sandra Costa Santos
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Biography
Dr Sandra Costa Santos is an architect and academic who graduated in Architecture (ETSAC, Spain) in 2000. She practiced as a registered architect in UK (ARB) and Spain (COAG) until 2014. Sandra has been involved in academia since 2001 in a number of schools of architecture of various universities, including Robert Gordon University (UK), Northumbria University (UK), and CESUGA-University College Dublin (Spain), before joining University of Dundee as a full-time academic in 2018. Her scholarship was validated by the relevant Higher Education bodies in the United Kingdom in 2015 (Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, HEA) and in Spain in 2019 (Profesor Titular de Universidad, ANECA). She has acted as External Examiner of the Architecture programmes in University College Dublin and has been appointed as External Examiner for Leeds Beckett’s MA Architecture Futures course (2021-2025).
Sandra’s research looks at the social construction of architecture, with a particular focus in housing. She was Principal Investigator for the AHRC-funded Place and Belonging: what can we learn from Claremont Court housing scheme? (2016-18) with Vanessa May and Stephen Hicks (Manchester University) as Co-Investigators; and Co-Investigator for the AHRC-funded At Home with Children: liveable space for the COVID-19 challenge (2021-22) with Rosie Parnell (Newcastle University) as Principal Investigator.
Media availability
I am available for media commentary on my research.
Dr Costa Santos’ research centres on the sociocultural aspects of architecture, therefore crossing disciplinary boundaries. Her areas of expertise include housing and domesticity and the ways in which housing design and sociocultural constructions of home are intertwined.
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Areas of expertise
- Architecture and urban planning
- Housing