A few months after completing her doctorate in architectural history at Università Iuav di Venezia, Lidia Alessandra Zianna has obtained a contract as a postdoctoral researcher at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

She earned her doctorate in February 2026 with a thesis carried out under a joint supervision agreement with the Department of Art History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), entitled Donatello e l’architettura al Santo di Padova. Committenza, fonti, ipotesi sullo spazio quattrocentesco intorno all’altare maggiore (Donatello and architecture at the Santo in Padua. Patronage, sources and hypotheses on the fifteenth-century space around the high altar), under the supervision of Vitale Zanchettin and Ulrich Pfisterer.

Since September 2026 she has been conducting her research at EPFL’s School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, in the new laboratory Critical Histories of Architecture and Art (CHAART), founded and directed by Cammy Brothers and dedicated to the study of the art and architecture of the Mediterranean world between the Middle Ages and the early modern period.

The ongoing project at CHAART – Donatello and Architecture: Frames, Spaces, Structures – continues her doctoral research, extending its perspectives and field of enquiry. Starting from the case of the Basilica of the Santo in Padua, the study broadens its gaze to Donatello’s entire output in order to investigate the relationship between the sculptor’s work and architecture in its various manifestations, reflecting on the roots of his conception, its multiple forms and, above all, its widest implications.