Dr Federico Caprotti

Federico Caprotti is an urban geographer interested in urban futures. He is especially interested in digital urbanism, with a focus on urban AI and platform urbanism, and in the future of off-grid cities, especially infrrastructures in informal areas of cities. He has also carried out research on post-pandemic urban planning. He supevises PhD and Masters students, and teaches undergraduate courses on global urban futures, southern urbanism, and overseas field-based courses.

Federico is currently carrying out research on urban off-grid solar infrastructures including cooling, and urban wellbeing and the links between infrastructural disruption and traumatic experiences of off-grid living. Funded by a range of research agencies and other sources, this work is currently being carried out in South Africa and Uganda. He also worked for nearly 20 years on future urban projects in China. Theoretically, Federico is interested in applying insights from urban political ecology, socio-technical transition theory, Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and studies of innovation to his research. A keen interdisciplinary researcher, he publishes with a wide range of scholars and practitioners from multiple countries.

Federico's research has been funded by over £2.2m from a range of funding bodies in the UK, EU, China, Taiwan and South Africa, including the ESRC, British Academy, Royal Society and UK Energy Research Centre. Additionally, since 2022 he has been involved in consultancy with external partners: this work has attracted £1.8m since 2022.

Federico was awarded the £500K 2020 Newton Prize for a project linking off-grid solar energy to sustainable refrigeration-based businesses, run by women entrepreneurs, in Cape Town, South Africa, and was a Fellow (2018-21) of the Alan Turing Institute,. In 2017, a paper he was lead author on was named as one of the 25 most significant papers published in the past 40 years in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

Federico is an experienced member of research funding assessment panels and has served in senior review roles for a wide range of international funding bodies. He currently chairs the Built Environment panel for the Flanders Research Foundation (FWO), for whom he has also been a Review College member since 2023. He has acted as International Vice‑Chair for the Horizon Europe HERITAGE programme (2024), as a grant panelist for Horizon Europe’s Driving Urban Transitions European Partnership (2023–24), and as Chair of the International Expert Panel for KTH Digital Futures, Stockholm (2021).

In addition, he has contributed to grant review and funding assessment processes for major UK funders including the ESRC, the Royal Society (2024), and the British Academy (2023), as well as for international programmes such as the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Foundation for Polish Science, and the Netherlands Research Agency–Chinese Academy of Sciences joint Green Cities funding scheme. Federico has participated in tenure appointment review processes for academic institutions in North America and East Asia.

Broad research specialisms:

Urban futures; nature and the city; off-grid cities; urban political ecology; sustainable cities; eco-cities; smart cities; platform urbanism.

Qualifications:

BA (Hons) Geography, Oxford University;
DPhil Geography, Oxford University;
Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice, University of Plymouth;
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Career:

Federico joined the University of Exeter as associate professor in human geography in 2016, and in 2020 became a professor of human geography. Prior to joining Exeter as associate professor in human geography, Federico was senior lecturer and then reader in cities and sustainability at King’s College London. He has previously lectured at the universities of Leicester, Oxford, UCL, and Plymouth. Federico holds a bachelor’s and doctoral degree from Oxford University, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.