Dr Elisabetta Pietrostefani PhD

Personal Statement

Elisabetta joined the Department of Geography and Planning and the Geographic Data Science Lab as a Lecturer in Geographic Data Science in January 2023. As a quantitative urban geographer, she is interested in applying data and technologies to improve the understanding of urban development and inequalities. Currently, she is building on spatial survey data collected in 2018 and 2021 in Lebanon, together with satellite imagery measuring the degree of damage of buildings, to investigate the effects of the 4th of August Beirut Blast on vulnerability and inequality indicators.

She completed her PhD in Planning Policy and Urban Economics from the London School of Economics. Her PhD research focused on the evaluation of urban policies and on analysing the effects of density policies and urban development in multiple geographies.

Before joining Liverpool, she was a Fellow in Geographic Data Science at the London School of Economics where she designed a new course in Applied Geographic Information Science. She was also previously a Research Fellow at the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London, where her research focused on assessing well-being and inequalities in contexts of mass displacement. At UCL she was also a principal investigator and co-investigator on several research projects focusing on urban inequalities in the Middle East funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the UKRI Global Challenges research fund.

She has also consulted for agencies such as the OECD, UN-Habitat and UNHCR.