Tanja Herdt is an associate professor of Theory and Methods of Urban Design and section leader in the department of Urbanism at TU-Delft. She is both an academic and an urban designer with an emphasis on urban transformation, methods of urban analysis, and history and theory of the city. Tanja studied architecture and urban design with Prof. Thomas Sieverts at TU Darmstadt, and received her doctorate from the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich. Before joining the faculty at TU-Delft, she worked as the head of research for sustainable settlement design at the research centre ETH-CASE in Zurich.

In her research, she focuses on the topic of inclusive cities and the social effects of urban transformation, as well as the development and use of urban design methodology to gain new insights into socio-spatial phenomena. At the urban design practice Metron, she recently completed the urban design and planning scheme for the mixed-use residential district Lysbüchel Süd in Basel. Her research and urban design work has been frequently published in journals as well as exhibitions as for example at the Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014, the Swiss Museum of Architecture, 2007 and 2018, and the Zurich Architecture Centre, 2019 and 2020. Her research on the changing legacy of modern functionalist planning and the work of British architect Cedric Price was published under the title The City and the Architecture of Change at Park Books, Zurich, ISBN 978-3-03860-045-9.