Michele Campagna is a Full Professor in the Scientific Disciplinary Sector  CEAR-12a (ICAR/20)  Urban and Regional Planning.

He graduated in Civil Engineering (Architecture track) from the University of Cagliari in 1997. In 1998, he earned a Postgraduate Diploma in “Urban Planning: Environment and Territory” from the same university, where he later completed a Ph.D. in Land Engineering in 2003. After completing his military service as an Officer in the Italian Navy, he began, in 1999, an ongoing process of international training and specialization through intensive courses and disciplinary workshops, often supported by merit-based scholarships. Since 1999, he has also actively participated in national and international scientific conferences as a presenter—often by invitation and as a keynote speaker—sharing research outcomes in the field of urban and regional planning.

Since 1997, he has been involved in research activities within the former Department of Land Engineering—now the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at the University of Cagliari—initially as a research assistant, then as a research team member, and since 2006 also as principal investigator or team leader in competitively funded research projects at university, national, and international levels in the field of urban and regional planning. In 2008, he was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute for Environment and Sustainability of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

His research interests focus on spatial planning and governance processes, and environmental assessment. Special emphasis is placed on the use of innovative digital methods and tools to manage territorial transformations and support sustainable development processes—from building knowledge about urban and territorial systems, to assessment, and to support decision support in the design and planning of urban and territorial transformations. Over the last decades, his research has increasingly focused on Geodesign, with active international collaborations. He currently coordinates the AESOP Thematic Group on New Technologies and Planning and is a member of the International Geodesign Collaboration (IGC).

His research has also covered a range of additional topics, including historic centre regeneration, large-scale and landscape planning, environmental assessment, urban morphology, public participation in spatial governance, planning support systems, digital spatial information in territorial governance, spatial modelling, and meta-planning. He has developed an extensive international network of research and educational collaborations, especially in Europe, the United States, Brazil, and the Russian Federation.

He is the author of over 140 scientific publications, including a monograph in Italian and numerous articles in international scientific journals. He is editor of the book GIS for Sustainable Development published in 2006 by CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, distributed internationally.

In 2017, he edited the Italian edition of A Framework for Geodesign: Changing Geography by Design by Carl Steinitz (originally published in 2012). Overall, his scientific output has an H-index of 19 and an Hi10-index of 35, with 1,313 citations (source: Google Scholar, as of 14 April 2025).

He serves on editorial boards of several international journals, has acted as peer reviewer for many international scientific publications, and has evaluated competitive research proposals for various international organizations. He has also been a member of scientific and organizing committees for numerous international and national conferences in Italy and abroad.

At the University of Cagliari, since 2005 he has taught courses in the field of Urban Planning and Design (SSD ICAR/20) within the degree programs of the Faculties of Engineering and Architecture, supervising numerous undergraduate and Ph.D. theses. Since 2007, he has taught GIScience within the doctoral programs of the same university. He is currently a member of the Academic Board of the Ph.D. program in Civil and Architectural Engineering, where he has supervised many doctoral candidates. He has also been invited to give seminars and participate in evaluations in doctoral and master's programs at various universities in Italy and abroad (including France, Germany, Greece, Brazil, the Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United States). He has lectured in second-level Master's programs and has designed and coordinated international intensive courses for undergraduate and doctoral students, such as the 2011 International Summer School on Information and Communication Technology in Spatial Planning “INFOPLAN”, funded under the Lifelong Learning Program of the European Commission, DG Education and Culture.

In the fields of urban and regional analysis and planning, environmental assessment, planning support systems, and geodesign, he has carried out scientific and professional consulting activities for both public institutions and private entities.

Updated: 03.2026