Francisca Lima is a senior lecturer in Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh where she teaches history and theory of landscape architecture. She is also one of the research articles' editor at JoLA - Journal of Landscape Architecture (Taylor and Francis, Routledge). Francisca has also completed in 2023 the Edinburgh Leader programme coordinated by the Talent and Development team of the University of Edinburgh.

She completed her PhD in Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh in 2016 where she explored the importance of the role of open spaces to the revival of depopulated urban environments with a scholarship from the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation. Francisca’s research interests range from landscape theory, history, perception and aesthetics, to urban decline and green spaces in relation to community engagement and wellbeing.

Since 2005 she has been collaborating in research projects with the Philosophy Research Center of the University of Lisbon and recently with the OPENspace research centre, University of Edinburgh. Francisca co-chaired the conferences, Shrinking Cities I Expanding Landscapes (2013) and Landscape and Life (2017), with the support of the University of Edinburgh and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation respectively, among many other sponsors, and has worked as a guest co-editor of a special issue of the journal, Landscape Research. 

Francisca has been working as an independent designer since 2009 and since January 2016 has been a partner in Bound, an award-winning landscape architecture office based in Lisbon.

In 2005, Francisca completed her degree in Landscape Architecture at the University of Lisbon, with a final dissertation focusing on the theme of Landscape Aesthetics (20/20). In that same year she worked as a trainee at LEAF (Linking Landscape, Environment, Agriculture and Food), a research centre based at the University of Lisbon.