I am a Co-Investigator for KNOW Work Package 1, City Knowledge Co-Production, and an interdisciplinary planner with a formal background in history and development studies. At the Bartlett DPU, UCL, I am the Director of the MSc in Urban Development Planning and teach on two of the core modules for the course.

At DPU, I oversee the Urban Transformations research cluster and co-coordinate the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR)/DPU Junior Professional Internship Programme.

Outside the DPU, I sit on UCL's Urban Lab Steering Committee and the Urban Planning Advisory Group (UPAG), which reports to UNISDR's Special Representative of the Secretary-General. I am also the editor of the 'Forum' section of the journal CITY which seeks to stimulate debate on the city from a variety of experiences and viewpoints - especially those outside the confines of academia and the global North.

Before joining the DPU, I straddled the worlds of research and practice, working as a Research Fellow at the LSE and collaborating with a number of international and (particularly South African-based) local institutions with work that has spanned monitoring and evaluation, policy recommendations, and strategic planning inputs in the fields of (urban) governance, participatory governance, partnership-based service delivery, urban poverty, urban regeneration, and housing.