Profile
Sheida Yazdan Joo is a doctoral researcher at Loughborough University, with an academic background in urban conservation, architectural heritage, and photography. She holds an MA in Urban Conservation from the University of Leicester, where her dissertation, Urban Historic Districts Regeneration through Creative Placemaking: A Case Study of Leicester, United Kingdom, received the David Reeder Dissertation Prize for the best dissertation on an urban history topic. She previously completed an MSc in Restoration and Revitalisation of Historic Fabrics and Monuments at the University of Tehran and a BA in Architectural Conservation at the Art University of Isfahan.
Her doctoral research explores migration, photography, and the urban identity, with a particular focus on Leicester. Using photography as a practice-based research method, her work investigates how traces of migration become visible within the city. Her wider research interests include urban heritage, visual research methods, photography, migration, urban identity, placemaking, and the relationship between visual representation and the experience of place. Alongside her doctoral research, she is actively involved in heritage and community-based projects and has experience in architectural and documentary photography.