I am Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at the University of Manchester and Editor-in-Chief of RIBA's The Journal of Architecture. At Manchester, I lead the Urban Studies Lab and provide strategic leadership on the built environment as Manchester Urban Institute Built Environment Lead. I also serve as Academic Director of the Confucius Institute.

I contribute to the strategic development of the field through a range of national and international roles, including ESRC NWSSDTP Lead for the interdisciplinary challenge area 'Climate Change, Sustainability and Global Resilience' and former Chair of the Board of the Urban Studies Foundation (2020-2024), where I helped shape one of the leading global funding bodies for urban research. I serve as an independent expert for the European Commission in the evaluation and monitoring of EU-funded research and capacity-building programmes.

Trained as an architect at ETH Zurich and holding a PhD in Public Policy Design from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, my work is grounded in a strongly interdisciplinary formation. It advances a distinct intellectual agenda that repositions architectural inquiry within the mundane material conditions of everyday urban life. It examines the coevolution of sociomaterial infrastructures, human–nature relations, and lived practices in the context of the polycrisis, thereby extending architectural history and theory beyond conventional concerns with buildings, authorship, and formal traditions. In doing so, it places architectural thinking in dialogue with a broader range of interdisciplinary approaches to engage the socio-eco-technical entanglements through which cities are continually made and remade. This work spans diverse contexts, including China, Japan, India, Bulgaria, England, Brazil, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Drawing on complexity-informed and practice-oriented approaches, I examine how infrastructures mediate relationships between everyday life and wider social, cultural, environmental, technical, and economic systems across multiple spatial and temporal scales. This research foregrounds the intersection of different forms of knowledge and modes of inhabitation in shaping urban environments, and contributes to emerging debates on the role of architecture within broader socio-ecological transformations. 

My research has secured over £1.3m in competitive funding as principal investigator from major national and international agencies, including UKRI (ESRC, NERC), the Royal Society, the British Council, the Daiwa Foundation and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. I lead the international and transdisciplinary research programme Sustainable Infrastructure (SusInfra), which brings together collaborators across disciplines and continents to advance understanding of the socio-ecological dynamics of urban infrastructuring.

Recent funded research

MICRA Seedcorn Award (£5,980) and Oxford Brookes Research Excellence Award (£7,629). Co-Principal Investigator. With Chiko Ncube (Oxford Brookes), Tanja Bastia and Nan Zhang. 'Infrastructures of care for and by older people in Sub-Saharan Africa’ (2022-2023)

Royal Society Resilient Futures Challenge-Led Grant (£499,993). International Lead and Principal Investigator. 'Towards Sustainable Sanitation in India and Brasil (TOSSIB)' (2019-2023)

NERC Towards a Sustainable Earth (£519,880). International Lead and Principal Investigator. 'A Systems Approach to Sustainable Sanitation Challenges in Urbanising China (SASSI)' (2019-2022)

ESRC Strategic Network (£100,799). Principal Investigator, ‘Strategic Network: Data and Cities as Complex Adaptive Systems’ (2015-2017)

Daiwa Foundation Award (£7,000). Principal Investigator, ‘Harmonica Alley, Yokohama: a visual ethnography’ (2015)

Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation (£3,000). Principal Investigator, ‘Harmonica Alley, Yokohama: a visual ethnography’ (2015)

Other awards

Curiosity-driven Research Award (£24,975), University of Manchester. Lead. 'Architecture against inevitability' (2026-2027)

Hallsworth Conference Fund (£18,010), University of Manchester. Principal Convenor. 'Urban Infrastructures in the Polycrisis: Comparative perspectives across the North, South and East' (2027)

CBBC China Exchange Programme for Young Internationals (£12,500). Lead. 'Nanjing Hydropolis' Spring School, in collaboration with Southeast University, Nanjing (2026).

ESRC Impact Accelaration Award (£16,784). Principal Investigator. 'Right to Water' (2021)

British Council Researcher Links Workshop (£24,000). Lead. UK China workshop in collaboration with Tongji in Shanghai, 'Towards Healthy China 2035:  Sustainable Urban Sanitation Infrasystems in the Yangtze River Delta' (2020)

GCRF University of Manchester QR Allocation (£50,000). Principal Investigator/Convenor. Transdisciplinary workshop 'INFRA+' (2020-2021)

Hallsworth Conference Fund (£20,000), University of Manchester. Principal Convenor. 'Urbanisation, Infrastructures and Everyday Life in East Asia' (2018-2019)

ESRC Impact Acceleration Award (£20,128). Principal Investigator. ‘Harmonica Alley, Yokohama: Tracing Urban Change between the Tokyo Olympics’ (2017)

Following several years in professional practice as an architect, my doctoral research was driven by an interest in how rapid urban redevelopment, displacement, and enforced proximity reshape everyday life. Focusing on Shanghai, I drew on environmental psychology, theories of place identity, and visual ethnography to develop the concept of the  ‘urban borderland’, challenging prevailing critiques of enclave urbanism in Asian cities by foregrounding lived experience and spatial contiguity.

This line of inquiry continues to underpin my work. I am currently completing a monograph on urban borderlands that synthesises two decades of research on urban coexistence, tracing how everyday practices mediate conditions of proximity, fragmentation, and transformation across diverse urban contexts.

Building on this foundation, I established the ESRC Strategic Network Data and Cities as Complex Adaptive Systems, which brought together scientists, social scientists, and policy actors to explore how emerging data sources and computational approaches might inform understandings of rapid urban change. Under my leadership, this initiative developed into Sustainable Infrastructure  (SusInfra), a major international research programme examining infrastructural transitions across China, India, Brazil, and sub-Saharan Africa.

My monograph, Translocal Ageing in the Global East: Bulgaria’s abandoned elderly (Palgrave, 2020), extends this work through a focus on ageing, care, and abandonment in post-socialist contexts. Drawing on extensive interview-based research, it examines how older people navigate conditions of uncertainty and infrastructural withdrawal, challenging the ‘ageing in place’ paradigm by demonstrating that translocality, rather than stability, characterises later life in the Global East.

I have also contributed to shaping interdisciplinary debates on the urban. Defining the Urban: interdisciplinary and professional perspectives (Routledge, 2018) and Urban Infrastructuring: reconfigurations, transformations and sustainability in the Global South (Springer, 2022) advance a critical account of infrastructure as embedded within socio-ecological and political processes. The latter argues for an ethical reorientation of infrastructuring, foregrounding questions of care and responsibility in the context of intersecting urban crises.

At the University of Manchester, I lead the Urban Studies Lab (USL), a transdisciplinary research laboratory based in Architecture (recent publications). Research at USL focuses on the dynamics of everyday urban life, examining how social practices intersect with cultures, natures, infrastructures, and architectures in shaping contemporary and future urban conditions, with a particular engagement with the majority world. Integrating decolonial approaches into research and teaching, we interrogate entrenched inequalities and power relations embedded in processes of urbanisation and urban transformation. Through sustained collaboration with a range of stakeholders, our work connects conceptual inquiry with policy-relevant and practice-oriented engagement across diverse urban contexts.

I also lead SusInfra, an international and transdisciplinary research programme structured as a portfolio of interrelated projects addressing urban sustainability and human well-being in relation to broader developmental trajectories. The programme investigates how infrastructural systems mediate relationships between human activity and the urban environment, with empirical work spanning domains such as sanitation, ageing, and digital transformation. Across these strands,  SusInfra advances a systemic understanding of the socio-ecological dynamics of urban change.

SusInfra brings together a global network of over 40 researchers across disciplines including architecture, urban design and planning, human geography, environmental science and engineering, sustainability science, and complex systems. The programme supports collaboration across career stages, from students to senior scholars, and maintains active partnerships with government, industry, and civil society actors. These connections enable both the co-production of research and the timely dissemination of findings in policy and practice contexts.

Please get in touch if you would like to learn more about USL or SusInfra.

My research is intrinsically challenge-led, addressing urgent urban questions with a particular focus on infrastructure in its multiple forms. It advances approaches that engage knowledges beyond dominant Western frameworks, working across and between disciplinary boundaries. As a result, my projects are developed in close collaboration with local stakeholders, user communities, and practitioners, ensuring both contextual relevance and pathways to implementation.

Under the SusInfra umbrella, I worked closely with Purva Dewoolkar and Pani Haq Samiti, a Mumbai-based NGO campaigning for water access in informal settlements. Together, we developed a digital application to track residents’ applications for water connections as they move through the city’s administrative system. The tool enables the identification of procedural delays and supports more timely provision of water services for underserved communities, demonstrating how research can intervene directly in infrastructural governance.

My research on the Japanese snack bar (sunakku) documented the cultural and architectural significance of a modernist entertainment building in Yokohama, which faced demolition in the lead-up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Through a series of public events and exhibitions in Manchester and Yokohama, and in collaboration with local organisations including Yokohama Heritage, I engaged entrepreneurs, policymakers, and community stakeholders. This work contributed to the building’s transfer of ownership and its designation as a heritage site in December 2017, helping to secure its continued use and establishing a precedent for recognising and protecting similar urban spaces.

Alongside this project-based impact, I have contributed to shaping research agendas and funding priorities at an institutional level. As Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Urban Studies Foundation, I led efforts to broaden the Foundation’s thematic and geographical reach and to diversify its governance structures. As Chair of the Board of AzuKo, a charity addressing housing poverty, I supported the development of organisational strategy, partnerships, and fundraising activities aimed at advancing dignified living conditions.

Current PhD research supervision:

Kshitija Mruthyunjaya (Architecture, SEED PGR Studentship): Architectures of Concealment: Industrial Production, Toxic Waste, and Environmental Injustice in Southern India's TiO₂ Industry (Main Supervisor, with Michal Huss)

Xin Li (Architecture, SEED PGR Studentship): Fair Shelter: Civic Infrastructures of Care for Bodies in Pain (Main Supervisor, with Sarah Marie Hall and Alison Browne) 

Rati Choudhari (Architecture, SEED PGR Studentship): Environmentally Sustainable Futures: the potential of modular city planning (Main Supervisor, with Joe Ravetz and Ulysses Sengupta) 

Ziqiu Ren (Architecture): Demonstrating Agencies and Assemblages of Food Markets as Socio-Urban Infrastructures in the Chinese Urban Context (Main Supervisor, with Trude Renwick, Hamid Khalili, and Huda Tayob) 

Rujin Wang (Architecture): Older Women’s Life Satisfaction, Community Engagement, and Ageing in Place in High Density Urban Environments in China (Main Supervisor, with Nan Zhang) 

Dongyang Mi (Geography, President's Doctoral Scholar, Manchester/Melbourne Scholarship): Hygienic citizenship: Shifting cultures of cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation (Co-supervisor, with Alison Browne and Saska Petrova) 

Completed:

Dr Mark Shtanov (Architecture, 2026, SEED PGR Studentship - no corrections): 18 01 02 An illustrated companion to industrial incineration as final disposition (Main Supervisor, with Jaise Kuriakose) 

Dr Qiwei Peng (Architecture, 2026, CSC Scholarship): Elevated highways as social constructions -interrogating the uncertainty of urban transport infrastructure in China (Co-supervisor, with Stephen Walker)

Dr Juliet (Junyan) Ye (Architecture, 2025 - no corrections): Urban nature re-encountered: perceptions, experiences and practices of Chinese international students in Manchester, UK (Main Supervisor, with Alison Browne and Matthew Dennis)

Dr Purva Dewoolkar (Architecture, 2024, SEED PGR Studentship): Making Sanitation: Unpacking Mumbai’s Blurred Terrains (Main Supervisor, with Alison Browne and Nate Millington); now University of Manchester.

Dr Kunzhe Kang (Architecture, 2023): A Dubious Experiment for Autonomous Architecture: a study of Chinese Experimenal Architecture between 1993 and 2010 through a Bourdieusian Lens (Main Supervisor, with Stephen Walker); now Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology.

Dr Yahya Gamal (Architecture, 2023): Incorporating procedural utility in contexts with multiple land markets: an application in Greater Cairo, Egypt (Main Supervisor, with Nuno Pinto); now University of Glasgow.

Dr Qi Liu (Geography, 2022): Beyond tourist practices: Practice-based approaches to sustainable consumption and production in tourism in China (Co-supervisor, with Alison Browne); now Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Dr Cecilia Alda Vidal (Geography, 2022 - no corrections): Urban transformation and everyday life: The politics of access to sanitation in Lilongwe, Malawi (Co-supervisor, with Alison Browne); now BC3 Basque Centre for Climate Change.

Dr Eric Cheung (MMU Architecture, 2020): A computation-enabled analytical construct for the assessment of alternative urban conditions towards sustainable transport systems and sustainable travel activities (member of the committee, main supervisor Ulysses Sengupta)

Dr Debapriya Chakrabarti (Architecture, 2020): The Practice of Idol-making in Kumartuli: Cultural Heritage, Spatial Transformation and Neoliberal Governance in Kolkata (Main Supervisor, with Graham Haughton); now MMU.

Dr Raqib Abu Salia (Architecture, 2020): Customary Land Tenure and Land Readjustment: Land Administration in Semi-Arid Ghana (Main Supervisor, with Ulysses Sengupta)

Dr Yan Yu (2018, British Council – CSC Visiting PhD Scholar, Architecture): The Revival of Chinese Traditional Villages under the Impact of Fast-Developing Urbanisation (Main Supervisor); now Macau University.

Dr Victoria Lawson (Planning, 2017): Can design deliver? A Liverpool case study of design-led city centre regeneration (Co-supervisor, with Graham Haughton); now University of Glasgow.

Dr Zhenbo Yu (Planning, 2013): Regulation of Urban Character: Style, Colour and Historic Character in a Modern Chinese City – The Case of Harbin (Co-supervisor, with Michael Hebbert)

In my pedagogy, I focus on fostering decolonial thinking, designing, and practice. My research-led teaching agenda is rooted in the positionality and partnerships that underpin my research, emphasising translocal and decolonial approaches. These approaches entail the study and critique of entrenched (colonial) structures of inequality with the aim of dismantling them through the design of interventions that respect and value labour, resources, and lives, both now and for future generations. Design, here, is then defined as research-led, intentional intervention towards sustainability. My modules seek to develop climate literacy and an ethico-political position of care in urban and architectural research and practice.

At the University of Manchester, I teach Global Urban Futures as part of the MSc Urban Studies. As part of the Master of Architecture at the Manchester School of Architecture, I contribute to Research 1 (Research Methods: Transdisciplinary Urbanism) and Research 2 (Dissertations). In studio, I work with the CPUai atelier.