Dr Deljana Iossifova is Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at the University of Manchester, where she is also Director of the Confucius Institute. She is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Architecture and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Urban Studies Foundation and AzuKo Foundation.

Iossifova leads a portfolio of research on sustainable infrastructure and transitions. She has worked on complex urban transformations, cities and biodiversity and the human ecosystems of ageing. Her main research focus is on the Global East and South, including China, Japan, Bulgaria, India and Brazil. Trained as an architect at ETH Zurich, she practised in Germany, China, Japan and the USA before earning a PhD in Social Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Iossifova is the author of Translocal Ageing in the Global East (Palgrave, 2020) and lead editor of Urban Infrastructuring (Springer, 2022) and Defining the Urban (Routledge, 2018).