Led by Professor Deljana Iossifova at the University of Manchester, USL includes senior academics, early-career and PhD researchers dedicated to exploring the present and future of urban everyday life and transformations through inter- and transdisciplinary approaches. Our members often work collaboratively to tackle key urban challenges, drawing on a wide range of expertise.
Deljana Iossifova leads the Urban Studies Lab (USL) . She is Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies, Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Architecture, and Academic Director of the Confucius Institute. Her leadership extends to serving as Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Urban Studies Foundation (2020-2023) and the AzuKo Foundation. Trained as an architect, her research and publications reflect a strong interdisciplinary approach. She has attracted >£1.3m in research funding as PI from the ESRC, NSRC, Royal Society, and smaller agencies, and heads a global network of researchers and research projects around urban transformations, including chaning urban everyday life, urban practices, urban coexistence, urban bordering, adn urban infrastructuring.
Dr Debapriya Chakrabarti is Lecturer in Architecture at the Manchester School of Architecture. She was an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the department of Architecture, University of Manchester. She is the author of 'Heritage, Crafting Communities and Urban Transformation' (Routledge, 2023). Her research expertise is in informal practices, livelihoods, the human-infrastructure interface and sustainable urban transitions, focusing on marginalised communities in the Global South.
Rati Sandeep Choudhari is a SEED doctoral scholar at the University of Manchester. Her PhD research explores the role of modular and generative planning and how incorporating Artificial Intelligence in the design process can help in creating adaptable and resilient urban infrastructure. Before joining The University of Manchester, Rati was a Freelance Urban Designer and Researcher at BUSarchitektur, Vienna, where she explored the potential of parametric urban research to enhance the decision making process in Smart Urban Design in India and Europe. Rati has a Masters in Architecture and Urbanism from Manchester School of Architecture and a Bachelor of Architecture from Dr. B.N College of Architecture (Pune, India).
Dr Purva Dewoolkar holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, funded by SEED. Her research is concerned with the negotiations and struggles through which sanitation infrastructure is produced in Mumbai, India. She is deeply involved in campaigns on the Right to Water and the Development Plan of Mumbai 2014-2034.
Xin Li is a SEED-funded postgraduate researcher at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on infrastructure of care, challenging infrastructural design to confront the systemic discriminatory structures of racial, gender, and class profiling through care ethics. Before her doctoral study at the University of Manchester, Xin studied at the University of Michigan (Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning) and participated in research/design projects related to disability studies in architecture, mental health infrastructure, and narrative representations and technologies. Xin obtained a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Michigan (2023) and a master’s degree in Building Construction from Auburn University (2016).
Dongyang Mi is a President's Doctoral Researcher at the University of Manchester, where he is completing a PhD examining emerging and dynamic socio-material patterns of cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation across Bejing and Tianji. Mi is an architect, researcher and urban geographer based in the UK, China, and Australia. Before joining the University of Manchester, he was a Research Associate at the Institute of Healthy Cities (IHC) affiliated with Hunan University, China. Dongyang holds an MA degree from RCA (Royal College of Art, UK), BA and BEng from HUST (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China).
Qiwei Peng is a doctoral student supported by CSC (China Scholarship Council) at The University of Manchester. Qiwei’s PhD project aims to provide a better understanding: how elevated roads as a kind of both physical and social infrastructure produce or coexist with the various socio-spatial assemblages. Before joining the University of Manchester, she worked as a researcher and volunteer to implement related design projects in Shanghai and Chongqing, China. Peng obtained a Master degree from The Manchester School of Architecture (2020) and a Bachelor degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China (2018).
Ziqiu Ren is a doctoral researcher at the University of Manchester. Before starting her PhD, she studied Architecture at Southeast University, China and Università Iuav Di Venezia, Italy, participating in research and practical projects on transportation infrastructure and urban/rural regeneration. Currently, her research is concerned with the timespace regime of everyday practices in the context of food marketplaces as infrastructure nodes, situated in broader food circulation networks and social agencies.
Ulysses Sengupta is Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at the Manchester School of Architecture (MSA). He is the founder of Complexity Planning and Urbanism (CPU), a research laboratory (CPU-Lab) and related Masters atelier (CPU&Ai). CPU uses a complexity framework to develop new digital tools, computational thinking and urban theory for evolutionary and emergent city systems
Rujin Wang is pursuing her PhD at the University of Manchester, concentrating on developing design strategies for age-friendly outdoor environments in urban settings. Her research dives into the perceptions, interactions, and residential satisfaction of older people with the aim of enhancing their quality of life and engagement within the community. She embraces a multi-faceted approach in her research, blending quantitative and qualitative research methods, to gain a well-rounded understanding of the issues at hand. Before embarking on her PhD study, Rujin obtained her master’s and bachelor’s degrees from the University of Pécs, Hungary (2022).
Dr Eric Cheung is a fully qualified architect in the UK. His research covers the investigation and development of advanced digital analytical methods and tools to explore and understand urban sustainability as the spatiotemporal relationships between urban spatial structures and human actions. He was RA on SASSI, TOSSIB and R2W.
Dr Yahya Gamal is Research Associate in Social Simulation at the University of Glasgow. He is interested in understanding the socio-economic human behaviours in cities following a complexity framework. His research applies Agent Based simulation methods to explore land markets and urban growth in Greater Cairo, Egypt. He worked as an RA on INFRA+.
Elsa Holm was a research assistant on TOSSIB. Originally from Sweden, she spent a year teaching English in Andhra Pradesh in India, before starting university, with the organisation Project Trust in 2018. She is currently studying Development Studies and Economics at the University of Manchester and is interested in the critiques of current and past global development practises, the politics of climate change mitigation, and topics and intersections of governance, sustainability and poverty alleviation.
Dr Qi Liu holds a PhD in Human Geography from The University of Manchester. Her PhD project focused on how tourist practices and their interactions with hotel infrastructures escalate resource demand in a Chinese hot spring town. She is interested in applying social practice theories to understand the dynamics of sustainable consumption in tourism and everyday life in China, covering topics relating to energy and water demand, sustainable tourism, lifestyle mobility, and lived experiences of sustainability. She obtained a Mater degree from Renmin University of China (2017) and a Bachelor degree from Xiamen University (2015), both in Sociology.
Dr Youcao Ren is Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Sheffield. She was a Postdoctoral Research Associate on SASSI. She holds a PhD in Landscape Architecture and an MA in Urban Design from the University of Sheffield. Youcao is an experienced urban ethnographer.
Dr Zavos was a Postdoctoral Research Associate on SASSI. His research, interdisciplinary in nature, sits at the intersection of Architecture, Human Geography and Material Culture. Before completing his PhD in Architecture at the University of Manchester, Stelios held industry positions as Design and Project Engineer in infrastructure and residential projects.
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