Professor Sonja Dragojlovic-Oliveira

Architecture

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Personal statement

Sonja Oliveira is Professor in Architecture and Sustainability Design Innovation and an Associate Dean (REF) in the Faculty of Engineering. She has over 25 years internationally leading design innovation and interdisciplinary research experience in health, energy, technology and design sectors. She combines design, architecture, environmental engineering and behavioural science to understand how complex phenomena interrelate and how society may develop responsive intelligent mechanisms in polycrisis extreme scenarios. She has led diverse multi and interdisciplinary design and research projects funded by EPSRC, ESRC, AHRC, Leverhulme as well as consultancy, ranging in value from £200k-£29mil in the UK and internationally. She has an established international reputation in socio-spatial intelligent communication and governance, nature inspired collective responsiveness and climate action thought leadership. She founded the Radical Architecture Practice for Sustainability network (http://www.rapsresearch.com) in partnership with leading design practitioners and researchers in Sweden, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria and France. She is an Advisory Board member to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK, Thought Leadership Specialist Advisor to the Design Council and a board member of the World Green Building Council (Serbia). Currently, Sonja is leading delivery of multiple research and innovation projects aiming to transform interrelated energy, climate and health systems to account for complex multi-scale interconnected encounters between humans, nonhumans, spatial, socio-technological and environmental dimensions of everyday life. Sonja has worked with climate tech and socially progressive innovation think tanks, UK and EU government institutions, business consultancy, international design firms, research institutions and recently housing associations to examine complex cross-disciplinary problems that emerge in the designed environment.

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Research Interests

Currently, Sonja is leading delivery of multiple research and innovation projects (value in 2021 in excess of £1.2mil) aiming to transform interrelated energy governance systems to account for complex multi-phenomenon and multi-scale interconnected encounters between humans, nonhumans, spatial, socio-technological and environmental dimensions of everyday life. As PI on the £586,000 EPSRC project GLOW [EP/V041770/1], she is in collaboration with multiple research and industry partners, looking to develop new communication protocols to manage home energy demand drawing on bee colony and home socio spatial energy behaviour data across three low energy housing communities. She was Co-I on the £772,178 EPSRC project RESIDE [ EP/R008434/1] (with Oxford Brookes) and was lead investigator on the energy evaluation work for the REPLICATE project (https://replicate-project.eu). She is also developing a new multimodal visual lexicon for radical architecture practice to better communicate collective needs across diverse multispecies environments. Below is a selection of projects delivered or ongoing since last 5 years:

  • 09/2021 (£586K) EPSRC GLOW-Energy nested bio system flows- from the home to the hub (PI) - Multidisciplinary collaboration with leading international experts in smart energy governance regimes including Energy Systems Catapult
  • 02/2021 (£310K) Department for Education ‘Achieving zero carbon’ bootcamp cpd course for industry (Co-Lead) collaboration with UWE EDM
  • 03/2019 (22K) VC Challenge Fund Automating environmental performance analysis in modular housing (PI) Collaboration with UWE FBL
  • 08/2019 (20K) G4G Energy stories from the campus in collaboration with BAM and Hydrock (Co-Lead) Collaboration with UWE FBL
  • 06/2019 (10K) G4G Perceptions of comfort in MMC housing – Zedpods study (PI) Collaboration with BCC, YMCA, BHF
  • 03/2018 (EUR 29mil) EU H2020 project Renaissance of Places with Innovative Citizenship and Technology (REPLICATE) Co-leading Housing energy intervention Evaluation Programme in Bristol (Lead)
  • 02/2018-(7K) North Somerset Council NSC Design Guidance and Sustainability Evaluation Consultancy (Lead)
  • 12/2017-(3K) SHAPE Energy Research Challenge Award (with Wroclaw University of Science and Technology) (PI) Invited Contribution in advisory capacity to European Research Challenges in Energy Policy Agenda
  • 10/2018- (£773K) EPSRC RESIDE ‘Residential building energy demand reduction in India’ (Co-I); leading and developing 2 work packages that will provide theoretical underpinning to data analysis and dissemination
  • 03/2017- (£46K) Flagship fund ‘MMC delivery in social housing’ (PI); leading data bid writing as well as research design, data collection, analysis, liaising with client and disseminating- most recently in AJ ‘Offsite construction’ issue 5thOct 2017
  • 09/2017- (£3.5K) Scott Brownrigg sustainability and environmental management consultancy (PI)
  • 01/2017 (£22K) BEIS, International evidence heating controls (PI)
  • 07/2016-09/2017 (£15K) HEA Developing Digital Feedback tools (CoLead) 

Professional Activities

Connecting Home, Health and Healthcare Pathways
Contributor
21/8/2025
Strategic Themes: Digital Twinning for Decarbonisation of our Cities
Participant
27/11/2024
Built Environment Research
Organiser
7/9/2023
Socially Intelligent Home Energy Networks - views from Glasgow residents
Speaker
4/5/2023
GLOW - Hive Launch Workshop
Participant
22/3/2022
Royal Institute of British Architects RIBA (External organisation)
Advisor
1/9/2021

More professional activities

Projects

APP82842: STARPOL - Socio-spatial Thermal Justice - a new analytics model for navigating polycrises (UKRI Cross Council Resp Mode)
Dragojlovic-Oliveira, Sonja (Principal Investigator) McGill, Grainne (Co-investigator) Vermeylen, Saskia (Co-investigator) Witte, Kimia (Co-investigator)
01-Jan-2026 - 30-Jan-2028
(3.9k) Refining the methodology for collecting data on the effects of climate change on sleep and mental health in care homes
Crawford, Megan (Principal Investigator) Tse, Dwight (Principal Investigator) Witte, Kimia (Co-investigator) Dragojlovic-Oliveira, Sonja (Co-investigator) McGill, Grainne (Co-investigator) Quigley, John (Co-investigator) White, Chris (Co-investigator)
05-Jan-2026 - 31-Jan-2026
Human-Centric, Healthy, Net-Zero Housing and the Role of Digitisation
McGill, Grainne (Principal Investigator) Dragojlovic-Oliveira, Sonja (Co-investigator) Moreno-Rangel, Alejandro (Co-investigator)
02-Jan-2024 - 02-Jan-2025
Centre for Nature Inspired Acoustics ( Doctoral Scholarship) | Luoni, Sara
Dragojlovic-Oliveira, Sonja (Principal Investigator) Windmill, James (Co-investigator) Luoni, Sara (Research Co-investigator)
01-Jan-2024 - 01-Jan-2028
Centre for Nature Inspired Acoustics ( Doctoral Scholarship)
Windmill, James (Principal Investigator) Dragojlovic-Oliveira, Sonja (Co-investigator) Lau, K H Aaron (Co-investigator) Wright, George (Co-investigator)
01-Jan-2024 - 30-Jan-2032
Living Paint, Vertical Forest | Leverhulme Studentship | McFadden, Constance
Witte, Kimia (Principal Investigator) Dragojlovic-Oliveira, Sonja (Co-investigator) McFadden, Constance (Research Co-investigator)
Leverhulme Doctoral School in Nature Inspired Acoustics (NIA) Studentship
01-Jan-2024 - 30-Jan-2028

More projects

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Contact

Professor Sonja Dragojlovic-Oliveira
Architecture

Email: sonja.dragojlovic-oliveira@strath.ac.uk
Tel: 548 4282