Ludovica Battista (1993) is an architect, researcher and storyteller whose practice unfolds through images, words and spatial thinking as equal tools for investigation and expression. Working at the intersection of spatial practice and research, she aims to weave together these languages where poetic gestures and political engagement become inseparable forces, come together to open up new possibilities for collective world-making.

As a PhD candidate in Urban Planning at the University of Naples Federico II, she investigates how post-anthropocentric perspectives can challenge extractive approaches to territory in Italy. Her work stems from the observation that the overlooking of more-than-human voices in spatial transformation processes often overlaps with the silencing of human communities, particularly in marginalised areas where social and environmental injustices intersect. Her PhD research explores the possibilities for urban planning to become a practice of listening and negotiation, acknowledging humans as co-authors among multiple active subjects in living territories. Besides participating in research and territorial projects at her department, believing in teaching as a space for research, she dedicates a significant part of her time to supporting urban planning and habitat design courses, where didactic practice becomes an integral part of her research journey.

Her relationship with moving images was first shaped during her teenage years at the Accademia del Cinema Ragazzi in Enziteto (Bari), a significant social actor in a challenging neighborhood that showed her how artistic practice could actively engage with territories and communities. Her later background includes studies at IUAV University of Venice and TU Wien, and significant experience at Andrés Jaque-Office for Political Innovation, where she worked on projects with international resonance bridging architecture, art and environmental politics. During the last years, she has encountered a constellation of enriching experiences, such as collaborating with La Scuola Open Source, participating in the 5-month practice-based HORROR research bureau at the University of the Underground, attending the winter school of the OCC! (Occupy Climate Change) Network – contributing to their digital Atlas of climate justice initiatives – and since moving to Naples she actively contributes to shaping the artistic direction of “SOTTENCOPPA – Carnevale sonico napoletano”, public-funded music festival and cultural experiment of urban sonic subversion.

Through her work, which seeks to combine academic and creative research, she approaches spatial practice as an active mediation between visible and invisible worlds, aspiring to shape a research practice permeable to conflicts, where technical knowledge and poetic-political gestures can meet. She believes in the survival of fireflies and stands by the conviction that the personal is political.