About Us

Yingling Fan is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. Her research examines human emotions in everyday urban environments. She strives to identify urban infrastructure solutions that can foster shared happiness in the city. She joined Urban Studies as an editor in 2018 and became a Managing Editor in 2020.

Michele Acuto is Pro-Vice Chancellor (Global Engagement) of the University of Bristol, where he is also Professor of Urban Resilience in the School of Geographical Sciences. Michele’s work centres on how cities confront global challenges, and the international dimensions of urban governance. Working closely with (and in) policy and multilateral organisations, Michele has focused on the climate crisis, urban health and pandemic response, urban inequality, the night-time economy, and resilience to major hazards and disasters. In doing so Michele’s work is also reflectively centred on the role of urban science and innovation. Ahead of joining Bristol Michele worked at University of Melbourne, University College London, University of Oxford and the Australian National University, and outside academia in the United Nations and the World Bank. Michele became Reviews Editor for Urban Studies journal in 2022 and a Managing Editor in 2024.

Jon Bannister FAcSS is Professor of Criminology in the Department of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he directs the Crime and Well-Being Big Data Centre, and a Professorial Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. He is Managing Editor of Urban Studies journal. His research interests are in urban criminology, policing, evidence-based policy, advanced quantitative methods and knowledge mobilisation (inclusive of co-production). Specifically, Jon’s research examines the interplay of urban processes and behaviours (urban transformations) upon crime and disorder. He recently participated in the Economic and Social Research Council funded Applied Quantitative Methods Network research programme and currently leads a programme of research interrogating the drivers of the spatio-temporal patterning of crime across diverse metropolitan areas. He has published widely across international social science journals and his most recent work ‘Crime and the city: Urban encounters, civility and tolerance’ (with John Flint) is forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Criminology.

Alison Bain is an Associate Professor of Geography at York University in Toronto. Alison completed all of her degrees in Geography, receiving her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2002. An urban social geographer who studies contemporary urban and suburban culture, her work examines the complex relationships of cultural workers and LGBTQ populations to cities and suburbs with particular attention to questions of identity formation, artistic practice, spatial politics, and urban change. Alison became an editor for Urban Studies journal in 2017 and Critical Commentaries Editor in 2024.

Karen Coelho is a retired Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) based in Chennai, India. She is an anthropologist with a Ph.D from the University of Arizona at Tucson in 2004. She has researched the city of Chennai for nearly twenty years, focusing on ethnographic and critical examinations of urban infrastructure (including water and housing), informal settlements and resettlement schemes, and the eco-restoration of rivers, canals and tanks. She serves on the editorial advisory board of the Review of Urban Affairs of the Economic and Political Weekly of India, and is a co-editor of the book Participolis: Consent and Contention in Neoliberal Urban India, (2013, Routledge India). She joined Urban Studies Journal as an International Corresponding Editor in 2019.

Chris Leishman has recently moved as Professor of Housing Economics at Heriot-Watt University to the University of Adelaide in Australia, and previously held a Professorial appointment at the University of Glasgow. He has led major studies of housing supply and affordability for the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, and has carried out studies of housing supply, developer behaviour and housing market dynamics for the UK Government (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister / Department of Communities and Local Government, and the former National Housing and Planning Advice Unit). Chris joined Urban Studies journal as an editor in 2016.

Scott Orford is Professor in GIS and Spatial Analysis in the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, and is the Data Director of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE) and he also directs the data programme of work in the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD). His research interests are in mapping, spatial analysis and statistical modelling, and the role of neighbourhood and accessibility in understanding and explaining socio-economic processes, particularly in the field of housing and housing markets. He also has interests in how new forms of data and link-data can be used to address urban issues, with an emphasis on geographical analysis and the built environment. He joined Urban Studies journal as an editor in 2019.

Catalina Ortiz is a Professor of Critical Urban Pedagogy at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment at the University College London. She is a Colombian urbanist and educator passionate about spatial justice. She is committed to an ethics of care and an engaged scholarship to trigger radical spatial imagination for a negotiated co-production of space. She uses decolonial and critical urban theory through creative methodologies to study the politics of space production to foster more just cities and the recognition of multiple urban knowledges. Her work revolves around critical urban pedagogies, planning for equality, and southern urbanisms. She is the Director of the UCL Urban Lab and joined the Urban Studies journal as an editor in 2024.

Senior Lecturer in Economic Geography, Newcastle University, UK. Astrid Wood is a critical urban geographer concentrating on governance and the built environment. Astrid joined the Urban Studies journal as an International Corresponding Editor in 2022 and as an editor in 2024.

Associate Professor of Geography & Planning and Director of the Institute for Inclusive Economies and Sustainable Livelihoods at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. Sergio holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and BA in Economics from Universidad de Granada, Spain. Before joining the University of Toronto, he was a professor of urban and regional planning and development at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. His recent work has examined the politics and governance of urban and regional planning; the South-South and South-North mobilization, learning and contestation of international policy models and “best practices” in sustainable transport; and place-based, inclusive approaches to local and regional economic development, with a particular focus in Latin America. His research is often comparative and emphasizes thinking from the Global South and from the peripheries of economic development.

Ruth is the Editorial Assistant and has been with the journal since 2009, previously carrying out a similar role for the British Accounting Review. Ruth first studied Chemistry at Glasgow University and then, after gaining a Diploma for Graduate Secretaries, worked in a number of private and public sector administrative positions before taking an extended break to raise her family. Ruth manages the editorial office, oversees our Special Issues and handles the journal’s finances.

Sara joined the editorial office of Urban Studies in 2025 after working as a freelance copyeditor for various companies offering academic editing services. She holds a BA (Hons) in English and Creative Writing from the University of Strathclyde and a graduate certificate from UCLA’s Professional Program in Writing for TV and is also a screenwriter, script reader and development producer. Sara handles the journal’s pre-production process, social media accounts and website.

University of Alberta, Canada

Tony O’Sullivan is a housing economist. Following his doctoral studies at the University of Sussex, he began his professional career as a lecturer at the University of Glasgow in 1983. Beginning in 1989, he spent 13 years at the Scottish national housing agency in a number of roles, including Chief Economist and Head of Research & Planning. Between 2003-2013, he ran his own research consultancy company. Over the course of his career, Tony has maintained strong academic links with the University of Glasgow where, since 2010, he has been Honorary Professor of Urban Studies in the Department of Urban Studies. He became a Managing Editor at Urban Studies journal in 2013. He became an International Corresponding Editor in 2025.