Ellen Verbiest, Postdoctoral-Researcher

Ellen Verbiest is a postdoctoral researcher at LUCA School of Arts, focusing on sustainability within a regionally funded project aimed at strengthening the European visibility and collaboration of research and education at Campus C-mine.

She is an architect and urban design researcher. Her work explores how design, mapping and visualisation can help understand and engage with complex environmental and societal challenges. She has worked across research, education and practice, often in collaboration with public actors, designers, researchers and local stakeholders.

She holds an MSc in Architecture from the University of Antwerp and an MSc in Human Settlements from KU Leuven. In 2025, she obtained her PhD in Architecture at KU Leuven with the dissertation From Circle to String Figures: Entangling Circular Built Environment Transitions via Socio-Spatial Visualizations. Her doctoral research investigates how visual and participatory methods can make the relations, tensions and possibilities involved in circular built environment transitions tangible and open them up for collective reflection and action.

She is particularly interested in how situated research and visual methods can engage with complexity, bring different forms of knowledge and practice into conversation, and contribute to more sustainable and socially engaged ways of shaping our environments.