I am an urban planner, an architect and a political scientist. I’m fascinated by the connections between the social and built environments.

Since the beginning of 2019, I have been the Van Eesteren Fellow at TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Department of Urbanism. My work brings feminist, post-colonial, and radical urban theory into design education.

I am a scholar committed to understanding the relationships between society and the production and governance of the built environment.

This means I investigate how actors and institutions from the public sector, the private sector and civic society interact in planning, designing, governing and inhabiting the built environment, both formally and informally.

My work focuses particularly on spatial justice, democratic governance, sustainability transitions, and the political dimensions of urban and regional planning. I am interested in how planning decisions distribute opportunities, risks, resources, and belonging across space, and how these processes can either reinforce exclusion or contribute to more just, democratic, and sustainable futures.

I work across research, teaching, policy development, and public engagement, collaborating with governments, universities, and civic organisations in different parts of the world. My research combines critical urban theory with practice-oriented approaches, with a particular interest in the Global South, informal urbanisation, public goods, and participatory planning.These basic but foundational ideas explain much of my actions as an educator and researcher.

I am a PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield in the UK. I have collaborated with the Spatial Planning & Strategy chair on the Horizon Europe Project UP2030. I hold a degree in Architecture & Urbanism from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), completed an exchange course at IHS Erasmus University Rotterdam, and earned a master’s degree in Urbanism from TU Delft.

I’m a guest researcher at the Laboratory of Urban Studies (LeU-UFRJ) and the Delta Urbanism research group at TU Delft. With Prof. Roberto Rocco, I edit and co-host the Duty of Care podcast, a platform for discussions with academics, practitioners, and students focusing on planning for a just transition, considering the entanglement between spatial justice and sustainability.

I believe that transforming the world is possible, but it begins in the present. My research explores how people and communities not only imagine and but build and embody alternative futures in the present. I seek to understand how social transformation happens from the bottom up and the top down. I also develop practical tools and creative participation methods to amplify voices often excluded from decision-making.

By challenging Western-centric approaches to spatial development, I advocate for recognising diverse pathways toward more just and sustainable futures. In my academic practice, I am committed to transdisciplinary research, collaborative knowledge creation, open science and education, and engaged teaching. My pedagogy encourages critical thinking, ethical engagement with communities, and reflection on real-world challenges and dominant narratives in spatial development.

I am a graduate (cum laude) of the Urbanism Masters and Honours Programme at Delft University of Technology, and have a professional bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the University of Waterloo (Canada).

My research is devoted to exploring the role of spatial design and planning in unlocking conditions toward self-determination and liberation of territories of ethnic conflict. My thesis was a recipient of the Design for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Award from TU Delft. I recently co-led a master’s studio with students from the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, exploring the agency of design in conflict and developing new typologies for living.

Irene Luque Martin is a spatial designer, educator, and researcher committed to radical spatial imagination and the “otherwise” of spatial design. With over a decade of professional experience in spatial design across rapidly transitioning territories, she now focuses on research and education as catalysts for systemic change.

At TU Delft, she is the initiator of a growing body of work on designing by feminist values, using intersectional, collaborative, and justice-driven approaches to reimagine how we teach, learn, and practice spatial design. Her work challenges dominant norms and positions the university as a site of transformative and imaginative action.

I am Nima Tabrizi, an architect and urban stroller who happens to have become an urban researcher. Seeking the vernacularity in architecture, the archetype of the Qanat, as a community-driven water infrastructure, caught my attention when I was a student.

This led me to pursue my studies, and later my collective research through design practice, in a more socio-ecologically oriented direction. I co-founded Atelier SigmaN and Workshop on REGENERATION in Iran, looking for contextuality and temporality within architecture and urban/rural development.

I am an architect researching how transportation infrastructure has been used as an instrument of physical division within urban areas. I am pursuing my PhD at the TU Delft Faculty of Architecture, in the Spatial Planning and Strategy section, under the supervision of Caroline Newton and Roberto Rocco.

I received my Master’s of Architecture from Columbia University GSAPP, and a BA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

I am a doctoral researcher at the Department of Spatial Planning and Strategy at Delft University of Technology. I am fascinated by how cities can adapt to climate change through collective action. I’m particularly interested in understanding how climate adaptation can be grounded in lived experience rather than top-down planning, and how these dynamics operate within and reinforce existing structures of inequality and power.

My name is Marh Echtai. I am an urbanist and a passionate advocate for spatial justice. My work is driven by the belief that places scarred by conflict, displacement, and climate change can be transformed into spaces of resilience, equity, and hope.

I see planning not only as a technical exercise but also as a political and cultural practice that empowers communities to reclaim agency, dignity, and memory. Rooted in both lived experience and research, my vision is to bridge global challenges with local actions, advancing inclusive futures built on justice, empathy, and collective imagination.

I am a PhD candidate in Architecture, Urbanism, and Design at the Federal University of Ceará, in Brazil, and a visiting researcher at TU Delft. I hold a Master’s and a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the Federal University of Ceará, complemented by an academic exchange at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Strasbourg. Alongside my research, I am a lecturer in Architecture and Urbanism at University Christus.

My research interests include urban informality, critical cartography, city information modelling and insurgent planning. I am especially interested in how mapping practices can support more just and inclusive urban transformations. In parallel, I engage in community-based technical collaboration with local actors on issues related to housing, territory, and urban rights, bridging academic research and situated urban practices.

My name is Ester Carro, and I am passionate about urban transformation and social impact. My work connects design, architecture, and social innovation, with a focus on decent housing, environmental regeneration, and circular solutions.

I always aim to integrate community participation, female empowerment, and the promotion of the local economy to contribute to the territorial development of Brazilian favelas.

I am currently a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft. My research investigates the history of urban planning from an institutional perspective. Specifically, I focus on how historical institutional choices have shaped specific urban development pathways, and how spatial inequality has accumulated throughout this process.

By broadening this inquiry through the lens of spatial justice, I comprehensively examine not only distributive inequality but also issues of procedural exclusion and recognitional marginalisation. Furthermore, I explore methodologies to interpret and visualise these institutional and spatial processes through the dynamics of housing.

I hold an MSc. in Architecture and Building Engineering from the University of Naples Federico II. My professional journey has been driven by a deep passion for addressing pressing environmental and societal challenges, exploring possible ways to shape more sustainable and inclusive communities.

During my collaboration with the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN), I explored the implementation of climate adaptation solutions by utilising GIS-based climate assessments.

I am a Professor of Geography in the Department of History, Politics & Social Justice at Winston-Salem State University, and the Faculty Lead for the Spatial Justice Studio at the Centre for Design Innovation (SJS @ CDI). I received my doctoral degree in Geography from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with an emphasis in Urban and Regional Planning.

My research interests include a variety of topics related to spatial (in)justice — local government boundary change, urban form and the built environment, and urban sustainability. Recently, I have published several research articles that quantitatively explore the spatial attributes of communities to better understand how spatial (in)justice manifests itself through the built environment.