Nelson Mota is an Associate Professor at Delft University of Technology, specializing in housing design and architectural education. He holds a professional degree in Architecture (1998) and an advanced master's in Architecture, Territory, and Memory (2006) from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. In 2014, he earned his PhD from Delft University of Technology with a dissertation titled “An Archaeology of the Ordinary: Rethinking the Architecture of Dwelling from CIAM to Siza,” which explores the intersection between vernacular social practices and housing architecture.

Nelson is a founding partner of comoco arquitectos, an architectural firm that won the Portuguese National Prize for Architecture in Wood in 2013. He is the author of A Arquitectura do Quotidiano (2010) and co-editor of Global Housing: Dwelling in Addis Ababa (2020). He has co-edited several academic journals, including Footprint and Joelho. His research focuses on housing architecture and architectural ethnography, and he contributes regularly to C3 Magazine as an architecture critic. He was a member of the Footprint editorial board from 2012 to 2023 and is currently on the editorial board of the DASH book series.