Investigators

Deljana Iossifova is Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at the University of Manchester, where she heads the Urban Studies Lab (USL) and serves as Academic Director of the Confucius Institute.  She is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Architecture, the former Chair of the Board of  the Urban Studies Foundation and current Chair of the Board of the AzuKo Foundation. 

An award-winning architect with global experience, Iossifova's 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. She works with a global network of collaborators, SusInfra, on urban transformations, chaning urban everyday life, urban practices, urban coexistence, urban bordering, and urban infrastructuring. Her publications include Urban Infrastructuring (Springer, 2022), Defining the Urban (Routledge, 2018), and Translocal Ageing in the Global East (Palgrave, 2020). 

Dr Murilo S. Baptista is a reader at the University of Aberdeen, having joined this University in 2009. Before joining UoA, he has worked in several other centers in Brazil, USA, Germany, Italy, and Portugal. One of his main themes of research is related to unraveling the complex relationship among information, collective behavior and structure in networked complex systems for its posterior modelling. He has also interest on characterizing and modelling data using techniques from data sciences, nonlinear time-series analysis and machine learning. 

Professor Bhide is Dean of the School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences.  She has been deeply involved in issues related to urban poor communities and housing rights groups.. Her publications include : ‘A Civil Society Approach to Slum Sanitation Programmes of Mumbai’ and ‘When a participatory slum sanitation programme encounters urban informality’ in International Area Studies Review.

Hongbin Chen is professor at the Environment Science and Engineering School, Tongji University. He is the leader of Shanghai Water Pollution Control Public Service Innovation Platform. His research focuses on the biotreatment of polluted water, wastewater reuse theory, and the development of wastewater reuse. He is the principal investor for over 30 scientific projects, including Natural Science Foundation of China, National State Water Key projects, international cooperation key R&D projects, enterprise R&D projects, etc. He has  published over 140 papers and obtained more than 10 China Patents.

Nannan Dong is Associate Professor at the Department of Landscape Study and Assistant Dean of CAUP (College of Architecture and Urban Planning) at Tongji University. He is the Vice Director of the Center of Built Environment Technology and coordinates the international joint research lab at CAUP. He has two decades experience in interdisciplinary planning research and practice, pioneering innovative and sustainable solutions for livable cities in China. 

Alexandros Gasparatos is Professor of Sustainability Science at the Institute for Future Initiatives (IFI), University of Tokyo and a Visiting Associate Professor at the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS). He is an Editor for Sustainability Science (Springer) and served as a Coordinating Lead Author (CLA) for the Asia-Pacific Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Feng Luan is a Associate Professor at the Department of Urban Planning, Tongji University. Prof Luan’s research focuses on urban and rural development and strategic planning, with an emphasis on the Yangtze River Delta. Among other projects, he was a main investigator on ‘Key Technologies for Spatial Planning and Land Use in Villages and Towns (funded by the Major Program of the National Science & Technology Pillar Program). He has led many awards winning urban planning and urban policy making projects across China. 

Nir Oren is a Professor of Computing Science at the University of Aberdeen. His research lies in the field of multi-agent systems, where he focuses on reasoning in complex domains using argumentation, computational models of trust and normative constraints. His recent work includes optimising on-demand transportation service pricing and the explanation of automated reasoning using argumentation.

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

Economist, Master of Education and PhD in Humanities. Vice-coordinator of the Center for Social Studies and Research in Disaster (NEPED). Valencio's research focuses on a systemic and complex approach to contemporary socio-environmental issues related to the territory & water binomial, such as: formulation, implementation and identification of contradictions between public sanitation policies; multidimensionality of the social aspects of disasters and the technical practices of crisis management; or journalistic coverage of water crises and disasters. 

Richa Bhardwaj is a Doctoral Research Scholar at the School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute  of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. Her dissertation explores the pathways of inclusion-exclusion in the context of state restructuring and planning regimes in tier two cities in India. Richa has worked extensively as a development sector professional and urban researcher in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region with a focus on intersections of urban poverty, planning, and governance. 

Purva Dewoolkar was a Research Associate on TOSSIB. Currently, she is associated with the Right2Water project and completing a PhD at 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.

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 Yin Long is Research Associate at the Institute for Future Initiatives (IFI), University of Tokyo. Prior to joining IFI she was a Guest Researcher at the Centre for Low Carbon Society Strategy of Japan Science and Technology, Assistant Researcher at the National Institution of Environment Studies (NIES), and an Assistant Professor at the Tokyo University of Science.

Mahmud is a PhD researcher at the Complexity, Planning and Urbanism Research Lab (CPU-Lab) at the Manchester Metropolitan University. He is interested in how new forms of data, such as user-generated and crowdsourced urban data, can help us better understand and manage cities as complex systems. 

Ana Claudia Chaves Teixeira develops her post-doctorate in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Federal University of São Carlos, as part of the TOSSIB project. She holds a PhD in Social Sciences and is also a collaborating professor at the Post-Graduation in Political Science at the State University of Campinas. Main research areas: democracy, participatory democracy, participation in public policies, social movements and civil associativism. 

 While completing an M.Sc International Development at the University of Manchester, Anthony worked as a Research Assistant on the initial phases of SASSI. Anthony reads Chinese policy documents in their original. He is interested in Chinese development policy and the Belt and Road Initiative. 

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+.

Jenna Lowe is a current MSc Environmental Monitoring, Modelling and Reconstruction student at the University of Manchester. She is interested in examining the political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of urban environments in relation to the complex sanitation relationships between and within communities using qualitative research methods.   She worked as RA on SASSI.

Tarquin Nelson studied for an Environmental Governance masters at the University of Manchester and worked as RA on SASSI and INFRA+. Interested in the nature of power dynamics and how this affects the implementation of infrastructure and its effects on inequality in both the urban and rural environments.

 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.

 Yuqiao Song was a Research Assistant on SASSI and TOSSIB. He is currently reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) at the University of Manchester. He has lived in China, Brazil and the UK and is interested in economics and public policy. 

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. 

 Ana Baltazar is  Associate Professor at the School of Architecture, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil, where she coordinates the Architecture and Urbanism Graduate Programme and co-leads the research groups LAGEAR (Graphics Laboratory for Architectural Experience) and MOM (Living in Other Ways). Her research focuses on the use of interfaces (physical, digital and hybrid) to increase the possibilities of autonomy and emancipation of users in the production of space. 

Dr Clara Greed is Emerita Professor of Inclusive Urban Planning at the University of the West of England Bristol. As a town planner and urban designer her main interests include inclusive accessible cities,  and planning for women’s needs. She has become increasingly involved in research and publication on the provision of public toilets in cities, particularly for women, who have fewer facilities to start with. She is a member of the British Standards Committee 6465 which set s standards for toilet provision in the UK and of the World Toilet Organisation.

Sarah is an urbanist, curator and writer, currently leading a strategic consultancy for environmental, cultural, and social-impact organizations and initiatives. In previous roles, she has explored the intersections of cities, society and ecology within leading international institutions of culture, policy and research. Sarah’s outlook is glocal, interdisciplinary and future-facing. She has been recognized as a World Cities Summit Young Leader, one of the Global Public Interest Design 100, a British Council / Clore Duffield Cultural Leadership International Fellow, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Jochen Monstadt holds the Chair of Governance of Urban Transitions at the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University. His research revolves around the contingent and place-based transformation patterns of cities and how these are mediated by technical infrastructures (energy, water, wastewater, solid waste, transportation, and ICTs). His specific interest is how the socio-technical design and governance of those critical systems shape the sustainability of cities in the global North and South. At Utrecht University he is leading the university-wide research hub on “Transforming Infrastructures for Sustainable Cities”. 

Ana Augusta Rezende is an Associate Professor at the Universidade Federal de Vicosa, Brazil, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in Civil and Environmental Engineering. She has vast experience in the area of sanitation, water and environmental resources. Her research focuses on decentralized sanitation systems, solid waste and water resources management with an emphasis on waste recovery and effluent reuse.

Nikolas Rose is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London, which he founded in 2012.  His next book, The Urban Brain Mental Health in the Vital City, written with Des Fitzgerald, will be published in by Princeton University Press in 2021.

Tim Schwanen is Professor of Transport Studies and Geography and Director of the Transport Studies Unit at the University of Oxford. His research concentrates on transformations in the everyday mobilities of people, goods and information in conjunction with urbanisation, technological and climate change, and other processes of change.

As the Senior Science Lead for Cities, Urbanization and Health for the Wellcome Trust's Our Planet Our Health Programme, Dr. José Siri helps manage the programme's portfolio of urban research and build strategic engagement to advance the field of planetary health. Over his career in research and policy, Dr. Siri has worked to develop and apply systems approaches to urban health, focusing on leveraging science for healthy development, developing simple systems tools to catalyze better decision-making, and improving understanding of complex challenges.