Dr Martina Manara is a Lecturer in Urban Studies and Planning at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London (UCL). She holds PhD and MSc degrees in Urban Planning from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research was awarded an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the LSE and a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship at the University of Sheffield. Through mixed-methods interdisciplinary research, her independent and collaborative work studied the implementation and effects of programmes delivering formal property rights and formal neighbourhoods in urban Tanzania. Her current research develops an innovative methodology to study informal land rights and justice systems in the unplanned settlements of African cities, advancing debates on urban informality and de-facto regulations in urban planning. Her work has been published in top-tier interdisciplinary journals and disseminated to a wide range of stakeholders.