Speakers and presenters

CLLR LIAM ROBINSON is Leader of Liverpool City Council and has been a Councillor since 2008, representing the Kensington & Fairfield ward. He became Leader in May 2023, having previously held the position of Cabinet Member for Finance, responsible for setting the Council’s budget. Prior to that, Cllr Robinson was Chair of Merseytravel, and subsequently Portfolio Holder for Transport for the Liverpool City Region. During his time at Merseytravel and the Combined Authority, making public transport more affordable, particularly for young people, was a key focus. He championed the introduction of reduced-price bus fares for young people up to their 19th birthday, which led to a 168% growth in journeys by young people. He also led the procurement of a new fleet of publicly owned trains for the Merseyrail network, including pioneering disability access features. He previously worked in public transport, holding management positions in the rail, bus and coach industries, including responsibility for three of Britain’s largest railway stations: Liverpool Lime Street, London Liverpool Street and Sheffield. His priority is to lead an administration that puts Liverpool first, and is committed to making the city greener, using sustainable growth to create jobs, supporting citizens through the cost-of-living crisis and embracing innovation to improve Council services. Cllr Robinson is married with two young children and enjoys cycling and football in his free time.

I trained in the North West on the Public Health training scheme and I’m a medical doctor by background. I have also been an academic trainee and have published multiple peer reviewed papers. I am passionate about improving health outcomes and reducing health inequalities through driving collective action to improve the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age within Liverpool. I strongly believe in working with and empowering local communities to improve health outcomes. My current lead areas include wider determinants, addictions (drugs, alcohol, tobacco, gambling) and research and development, including being the lead for the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funded Health Determinants Research collaboration Liverpool.

Gerry Proctor MBE was born and brought up in Liverpool went to Durham University and then worked in St Helens, Merseyside from 1977, predominantly with young people. That was followed by a period in South America for 6 years working with poor communities in Ecuador and Bolivia. Returning to Liverpool in 1991 to work in the mixed neighbourhoods of Dovecot and Knotty Ash for 12 years. Since then I have lived and worked in Liverpool's waterfront and city centre connecting with the resident communities whilst also leading a hospitality project in Croxteth, La Salle Hotel School, offering young people a pathway to careers in the visitor economy.

Lord Nigel Crisp is an independent crossbench member of the House of Lords where he co-chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health. He also co-chairs Nursing Now, the global campaign on nursing. He was previously Chief Executive of the English NHS and Permanent Secretary of the UK Department of Health – the largest health organisation in the world with 1.3 million employees – where he led major reforms between 2000 and 2006. Lord Crisp is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, an Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Medicine. He was formerly a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health and Regent’s Lecturer at Berkeley. His publications on global health include Turning the world upside down – the search for global health in the 21st Century; Global Health Partnerships; One World Health – an overview of global health after Global Health Partnerships; and, edited with Francis Omaswa, African Health Leaders – making change and claiming the future. He described his time as Chief Executive of the NHS in 24 Hours to Save the NHS – the Chief Executive’s account of reform 2000 – 2006. A Cambridge philosophy graduate, he worked in community development and industry before joining the NHS in 1986. He has worked in mental health as well as acute services and from 1993 to 1997 was Chief Executive of the Oxford Radcliffe Hospital NHS Trust, one of the UK’s leading academic medical centres.

An exceptional leader, Nuala has amassed more than two decades of experience in development and placemaking internationally and is also currently a board member of Limerick Twenty Thirty, a property development company. Her previous roles include Head of Regeneration for the London Borough of Newham, Director for Economy of Place at Bristol City Council and Director of City Centre Development at Belfast City Council. Nuala has also spent time working in New York, leading on sustainable urban development and teaching at Columbia University. She is a registered architect and a graduate of Columbia University with a Masters in Urban Design. She will work closely with the Mayor of Liverpool Joanne Anderson, interim Chief Executive Theresa Grant and the Government Commissioners to continue the transformation of the City Development directorate.

After an erstwhile life as a Youth Worker, Pete joined Legal & General in 2007, launching a new generation of property funds focussed on liability matching and Defined Contributions pension schemes, and Legal & General’s joint venture with PGGM, which total over £5bn. In 2015, Pete moved to lead Legal & General’s investments with the Public Sector - including the Cabinet Office, Combined & Local Authorities, NHS, Housing Associations and Universities - which now total over £5bn. ​ In his new role, Pete continues to lead on public sector investments, as part of a broader remit to identify and drive strategic initiatives through which Legal & General can use its resources to benefit society. This includes Legal & General’s partnership with Sir Michael Marmot to address health inequality.​ Pete holds an MA from Brasenose College, Oxford in Computation, the IMC, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and Honorary Professor at UCL.​ Pete is heavily involved in local community projects in Harlesden, west London and a Trustee of the Institute of Community Studies and the Young Foundation, which works to create a more equal and just society through social innovation.

Prof Ashton was appointed director of public health for Liverpool City Council in April 2020 in a joint appointment with the University of Liverpool, where he is an honorary professor in the Department of Public Health and Policy. He leads a team of 30 people in the local authority, covering a range of public health activities, including the commissioning of public health services, health protection, health improvement, healthcare public health, embedding health in all policies approaches, and addressing the wider determinants of health. Matt led on the response to the Covid-19 pandemic for Liverpool, and his efforts have been recognised nationally through the award of the Faculty of Public Health’s presidential medal in 2021, and also the Chief Medical Officers' National Impact Award in 2022. Matt is passionate about bringing together the best people and partnerships in the region to improve health and wellbeing and reduce inequalities in local communities.

Mrs Campbell has worked at the city council since Autumn 1999 and has risen through the ranks of the Planning Department to hold various posts such as Principal Planning Officer, Deputy Team Leader of Urban Design and Heritage Team and City Centre Co-ordinator. Her 19 year career at the council has led Samantha to take a lead planning role in a number of major regeneration schemes from Kings Dock to Liverpool Football Club’s stadium expansion to the development of the £2bn Knowledge Quarter and overseeing the growth of the Baltic Triangle. The mother of two, who has a Masters in Environmental Planning from Liverpool John Moores University and Post Graduate Diploma in Urban Design at Salford University, has also played a key role in refreshing the strategy for Liverpool’s World Heritage site, liaising closely on projects such as Liverpool Waters and a new Cruise Terminal. As Head of Planning her brief will be to also oversee the development of emerging growth zones in the city such as Ten Streets, the Fabric District, the new Beatles Quarter and the implementation of the Local Plan to build 35,000 new homes across the city over the next 15 years.

Dr. Yonette Felicity Thomas is the founder and president of UrbanHealth360, an organization of multidisciplinary thinkers centered on a people-oriented, community-focused approach to urban health. Dr. Thomas is a globally acknowledged thought leader, urban health champion, and an advocate for valuing the health of women and girls as an economic imperative. A social epidemiologist/medical sociologist by training, she has served as the chief of Epidemiology at the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the National Institutes of Health, held academic positions at University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Howard University, and as a vice president for research. She founded Borjoner International and Strategic Transitions to influence the progress, health, and wellbeing of individuals and communities across the world. As a founding board member of Women’s Economic Imperative (WEI), she leads the organization’s focus on the health of women and girls as an economic value. Her work as global advisor for Evidence for Sustainable Human Development Systems in Africa (EVIHDAF) and the Centre for Urban Health and Development within the Asian Institute of Poverty Alleviation (CUHD-AIPA) extends her focus on the global south and the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals in this last decade. She is the Associate Editor for Women and Girls for Cities & Health. She is a founding board member of the International Society for Urban Health (ISUH) and recently led the organization into sustainability by serving as the inaugural executive director (as a board member) and has served as a science advisor for urban health to the New York Academy of Medicine. She is a founding board member and former vice president of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS) and served on the Steering Committee of the National Hispanic Science Network on Drug Abuse for more than a decade. She served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Revisions to the Common Rule for the Protection of Human Subjects in Research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences. Her primary research and publications have focused on the social determinants of health, health disparities, the health of women and girls as an economic value, the social epidemiology of drug abuse and HIV/AIDS and the link with geography, including edited volumes: Geography and Drug Addiction, Crime, HIV, and Health: intersections of Criminal Justice and Public Health Concerns.

Adriana is a researcher at the Centre for Transport Studies at UCL with over 10 years of experience investigating sustainable mobility and wellbeing and health in cities. Upon joining UCL, she participated in a large-scale interdisciplinary program defining visions for future liveable cities. Adriana has professional expertise in the planning and assessment of policies for active mobility, low-carbon transport and healthy places in Latin America and the Caribbean. She has collaborated closely with planning authorities and communities in the UK and internationally to build capacity and empower citizens with tools for transformative action. Her current research employs quantitative and qualitative methods to understand how the built environment of streets and neighbourhoods impacts children's health, subjective wellbeing, and travel behaviour. Her research also focuses on assessing policies such as the health impact assessment of new developments and understanding the broader benefits of healthy places interventions, such as fostering inclusive, sustainable cities and communities and achieving decarbonization goals.

Dr Ahmadreza Faghih Imani is the Teaching Fellow in Urban Sustainability and the co-convenor of the Urban Sustainable Environments (USE) option of the MSc in Environmental Technology at the Centre for Environmental Policy. Before, he was a Research Associate at the Centre for Transport Studies at Imperial College London. His research aims to understand how built environment & transport infrastructure, emerging technologies & data sources, advanced modelling techniques, and improvements to transport planning & policies can help cities to become more environmentally/socially sustainable. Before joining Imperial College London, He held the prestigious Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Toronto. He obtained his PhD from McGill University in 2017 where his dissertation was awarded with the Benjamin H. Stevens Graduate Fellowship from North American Regional Science Association (NARSC).

Aidan Watmuff is a data analyst for the Born in Bradford (BiB) longitudinal cohort study. After completing a BA in Human Geography and an MSc in Geographic Data Science at the University of Liverpool, he took the opportunity to contribute towards health research in his home city of Bradford and joined the BiB team in 2021. At BiB he has drawn from the theoretical and practical experience his degrees provided and has been involved in a range of both research and technical projects. His primary focus has been improving and expanding the geographic data available at the study. This has led to the development of comprehensive environmental exposure data and facilitated novel research into the relationships between micro environments and health in the city. He has a keen interest in health inequalities and enjoys combining applied research and data science to ensure complex data can be used effectively by all to facilitate health research at BiB.

Áine O’Connor, MPH, is the Research Project Coordinator for the PRC’s People, Health, and Place Unit, which conducts and supports research and capacity-building projects examining the roles of space, place, and environment on health, health disparities, and wellbeing. She additionally oversees coordination of the PARCS project, a mixed-methods study of the characteristics and use of large metropolitan parks (specifically, Forest Park in St. Louis). Áine obtained a Master of Public Health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, and has a variety of experiences working in community and stakeholder engagement, place-based research and study design, and the implementation and evaluation of projects and programs related to population wellbeing and equitable community development. Her professional interests center on the relationship between health and the built and natural environments; health equity; climate and environmental justice; and community-led and -informed research practices. In her free time she enjoys hiking, cooking, and good stories in any medium.

Alex Nurse is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning in the Department of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool. His areas of academic research include the governance of cities and city-regions, and urban cycling policymaking. He has broad areas of interest in how local actors are able to use national policy structures to deliver for their own ambitions, and how local authorities can overcome barriers to policies which are seen as a normative good. His recent book Rescaling Urban Governance: Planning, Localism and Institutional Change was published by Policy Press.

Alice Green is an Architect and Interior Designer and has specialised in health for over 15 years. Alice incorporates a holistic approach to design with a focus on service user wellbeing and finding innovative ways to create cohesive healthcare environments. Alice also sits on the board of Directors of Architects for Health, a non-profit organisation that advocates for best practice in healthcare design.

Amanda is a Senior Research Fellow at Born in Bradford, working within the Join Us: Move, Play (JU:MP) Sport England funded local delivery pilot focused on increasing children’s physical activity in Bradford through a whole-systems approach. Her JU:MP role includes qualitative research to understand influences on adolescent girls’ usage of parks in Bradford and the feasibility and acceptability of using a co-designed approach to developing green spaces. She is also delivering the Play in Urban Spaces for Health (PUSH) project to understand barriers and facilitators to designing play into urban spaces in Bradford and to implementing a school-led intervention to support children’s outdoor play. She has a background in quantitative and qualitative research, ranging across sports physiology, men’s health and health service evaluation, and has research interests in physical activity, active travel and greenspace.

Amy is a senior research fellow at the University of York. Amy has over 15 years of experience of community-engaged scholarship focused on building skills and capacities to evidence and take collective action to address determinants of health and inequality. She is passionate about promoting learning about how to redress issues of inclusion and marginalisation in policy decision-making, and how community and collective power and action can be harnessed to create healthier places, a healthier economy and living conditions.

Ana Luiza Favarão Leão is a collaborating researcher at the People, Health, & Place Unit at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. She is dedicated to the intersection of urban design and public health. Her work is driven by a commitment to fostering equitable and healthier cities globally, with a particular focus on low and middle-income countries. She is a Fulbright alum and recipient of a Doctoral Dissertation Research Award. She completed her PhD in Architecture and Urbanism in 2023 through the UEL/UEM Associate Program of Post-Graduation in Architecture and Urbanism. Prior to her doctorate, she earned her Master's in Architecture and Urbanism in 2018 from the same institution. She holds a degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the State University of Londrina, obtained in 2016, and followed this with a Specialization in Architectural Design: Composition and Technology of the Built Environment in 2017. She also pursued a Specialization in Statistics with an Emphasis in Quantitative Research at the State University of Londrina (2019-2020). Her research interests focus on Urban Design, the Built Environment, Walkability, Sustainability, and Healthy Cities.

Anastasija has been a Research Assistant at The Life Rooms (Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust) since 2022. Anastasija's role is to complete evaluation projects within The Life Rooms and to emphasise the service user's voice in all the projects. Through her contributions and efforts, Anastasija ensures that the experiences and perspectives of those who access The Life Rooms services are central to developing more effective care. Prior to joining The Life Rooms, Anastasija was an Honorary Research Assistant at University of Liverpool and contributed to a research project which explored the antenatal psychological experiences of women during the COVID-19 pandemic. This work provided valuable insights into the challenges and experiences of expectant mothers during a global crisis. Over a 12-month period, Anastasija evaluated the interoperability of clinical and social prescribing systems, focusing on the referral processes and service user experiences. This comprehensive evaluation is critical for the development of The Life Rooms Social Model of Health and the provision of person-centred care.

Andrew has 20 years’ experience working with businesses across the social economy to tell their stories and increase their impact. He has worked nationally and internationally, helping connect people with ideas and build networks. He is a founding team member of the Kindred team, working as communications and membership lead from 2020-2024. He’s also co-dean of micro-granting organisation Awesome Liverpool, which has given monthly £500 grants to support grassroots projects in Liverpool since 2013. Andrew leads on our engagement with members, local and national stakeholders. He is responsible for our peer-to-peer support, shared learning and resources amongst members and with partner organisations, our directory of STOs, member events, and ensuring that we remain STO-led. He is also responsible for coordinating our impact data collection and analysis.

Anna is a Research Fellow at University of Bristol - Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School. She is seconded part-time to Bristol City Council as part of the TRUUD project, where she works with Regeneration, Planning Policy and Public Health teams.

Anthony is a Lecturer of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Southern Queensland, and former senior data scientist within the Australian Bureau of Statistics and transportation web application developer with the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN). Sustainable and socially-equitable regional and metropolitan development is his mission and his research expertise includes capitalising on big and open data to both: examine the efficacy and outcomes of land use and transport policy standards; and to develop PlanTech that supports effective decision making and prioritisation of our most disadvantaged neighbourhood communities.

Antonia joined in November 2021 and is part of the Research and Development team in Impact on Urban Health, working closely with other programmes as well as communications and policy colleagues. In June 2023, she joined the Policy and Influencing team, where she continues to develop on our national and international partnership work. Prior to joining Impact on Urban Health, Antonia was chief executive of Coalition for Efficiency, a small, collaborative charity that supports charity and community leaders to reflect on, measure and manage the impact of their organisation and initiatives. Antonia has close ties with Mexico, where she worked for Semillas, a women’s fund supporting gender justice initiatives.

I came to England as a British Indian refugee in 1973, from Uganda when I was 13 years old. I attended Balham Boys School, and in my spare time trained as an Electrical appliance engineer apprentice. By the age of 16 I was proficient in repairing electrical appliance such as fridges, fridge-freezers, vacuum cleaners and other small household appliances like irons and kettles etc. I used these skills to support my family and also fund my university degree of Pharmacy, which I completed in Leicester, graduating in 1983. I worked as a Locum Pharmacist for two years and alongside this, in partnership with my brother, also ran a successful electrical repairs business called Electrocare in Tooting. I established my first company called Mildcare Limited in 1983 opening my first Pharmacy practice trading as Lincoln Pharmacy, and opened a second practice in Southwark in 1998. I served in the East London LPC and was part of the working group that introduced Flu Vaccination (which is now a nationally commissioned service), EHC, Minor Ailments and Methadone Supervision services in Tower Hamlets. I have always had an interest in flying planes, and in my spare time I successfully qualified as a pilot in 1989. I enjoy participating and trying my hand at most sports as well, in particular being part of cricket clubs and 5-a-side football teams in the past. I still enjoy golf and, most recently, have joined a padel club. During my 40 years of practicing as a Pharmacist I have always been involved with developing and addressing ways to meet our patients’ healthcare needs within our community; and have been aware of the need to always better our integrated approach to healthcare management. Since 2006 I have also been involved in “The St. Paul’s Way Transformation Project”, working closely with Lord Andrew Mawson and Partnerships, and was appointed director of a new social enterprise named St Paul’s Way CIC which was founded in March 2012 to kick start the Transformation in East London. In recent years, the NHS has continually encouraged pharmacists to become part of an integrated primary care team. I have always dedicated time to my continuing professional development and I qualified as an independent prescriber in 2016. In 2023 I was awarded Independent Prescriber of the Year by Pharmacy Business. I am now part of the NHS Pathfinder site in Southwark, and with this opportunity furthering my professional development, I hope the journey will continue to help me to fulfil my company’s, as well as my personal, mission statement: “to serve my patients and community to the best of my ability, to ease the burden of their disease and improve the quality of their lives”.

Audrey de Nazelle is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London. Her work, at the intersection of environmental sciences, health behaviour, transportation, and urban planning, aims at guiding decision-makers towards health-promoting built environments and policies. Much of her research has been on the relationships between active travel and air pollution (exposures, health risks and benefits, and societal engagement). Dr de Nazelle holds a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Environmental Sciences, a Maîtrise in Mathematics from the University of Paris VI Pierre et Marie Curie, and she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (now ISGlobal), Barcelona, Spain.

Dr. Ayşe Özbil Torun received her B.Sc. (2000) and M.Arch (2002) degrees in Architecture from Yıldız Technical University and Middle East Technical University respectively. She obtained her Ph.D. (2010) degree in Architecture from Georgia Institute of Technology with dissertation titled “Walking to the Station: The Effects of Street Connectivity on Walkability and Access to Transit”. During her Ph.D. studies she taught architectural design studio for 4 consecutive years at Georgia Institute of Technology College of Architecture. She currently teaches at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, including Architectural History & Theory, Design studio, and PhD and MSc supervision. Dr. Ozbil Torun`s research interests mainly lie in the fields of spatial modelling and urban form analysis using space syntax techniques. Her work is directed towards pedestrian-friendly neighbourhood and street design strategies enhancing active transportation in cities. Her recent studies have focused on walkability and obesity, transit-oriented planning, and design of sustainable cities. Dr. Özbil Torun has been a member of the editorial board of Urban Design International since 2012, and her work has been published nationally and internationally.

Professor Bernadette McGuinness is especially interested in Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment and the role of inflammation and nutrition in neurodegeneration.

Blake Jackson is an architect working at the nexus of sustainability, wellness, resiliency, and equity, who serves as the global Director, Sustainability for NORR. NORR is an 800-person integrated architecture, interiors, planning and engineering company, headquartered in Toronto, with 14 locations in the US, UK, UAE, and Canada. Blake has 23 years’ experience in the AEC industry, holding a Bachelor of Architecture from Kennesaw State University in Marietta, Georgia and a Master of Architecture in Sustainable Environmental Design from the Architectural Association Graduate School in London. Blake is a prolific author, speaker, and educator on topics affecting the built environment. He currently serves on the Advisory Board for the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Interior Design Program, is on the AIA National 2030 Working Group, and he is a former Vice President, Advocacy for the Boston Society of Architects. Blake was recognized in 2015 by BD+C Magazine as a top “40 Under 40” AEC professional, he was named a LEED Fellow by the USGBC in 2021, and he is a 2024 recipient of the AIA Young Architect Award.

Caglar is an urban planner academic and a Lecturer in Urban Planning at The University of Manchester. His work and research focus on spatial planning, planning practice, housing policy, urban policy and governance, and health creation and health inequalities. He investigates these topics through practically engaged, evidence-focused, critical research and using both quantitative and qualitative methods. He is currently on a secondment to the Ministry of Housing, Local Government and Communities as part of UKRI Policy Fellowship scheme to bring academic expertise to policy making.

Carolyn Daher is a public health specialist with over 20 years of international experience connecting research, education and implementation to build healthier communities. Carolyn has a B.A. in Environmental Studies (Brown University), Master in Public Health (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School) and a Master in Psychosocial Intervention (University of Barcelona). Her work centers on how to generate greater impact in policy and society using scientific evidence, and ensure evidence-based practices in the creation and implementation of projects to promote health, especially in urban contexts. She currently coordinates ISGlobal’s Urban Planning, Health and Environment Initiative.

Catherine Max co-chairs the Future of London Health and Housing Impact Network. As an independent consultant, she helps organisations improve wellbeing and reduce health inequalities through strategy and action on social and environmental sustainability, place-making, urban design and related areas; and is a health and wellbeing expert member of the London Borough of Brent’s Quality Review Panel. With University College London Bartlett Faculty colleagues, Catherine conducts health and green space research and knowledge exchange. She led the development of Camden and Islington's Parks for Health Strategy; Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust's Green Plan; and planning and engagement strategies for Barking Riverside Healthy New Town. Catherine has been a trustee of a number of health, environmental and arts charities, most recently Sustrans. Previously, she was Lay Chair of NHS England’s Individual Funding Requests Panel (specialised commissioning) and a non-executive director of primary care trusts in East London.

Catherine has supported organisations from both public and private sectors in the design and delivery of transformational OD projects. An individual who enjoys collaborating with like-minded people to make the world of work a great place for all. She supports and challenges leaders and their teams to build great cultures, purposeful missions and businesses that are sustainable. Through building working relationships that are based on trust, openness and vulnerability she enjoys long lasting and mutually beneficial friendships. Following a successful corporate career culminating in a board position for a subsidiary UK PLC she has over 18 years’ experience in people and organisation development and has had the privilege of working with business across many market sectors including: NHS, LA, Police, Education, Manufacturing, Media, Pharmaceuticals, Finance, Insurance, Property and Energy. She has experience in: • Leadership Development • Team Development • Change Management • Culture & Values • Executive Coaching • Stepping Out from the top team • Career Development She lives on the Wirral and when not at work can be found walking the Welsh hills with her dog; learning to row as part of a quad and enjoying the company of friends at a very long standing book club.

Cathy is a senior Research Fellow at Born in Bradford leading on participatory research in the Healthy Urban Places consortium. She has a very diverse work background which includes working as a community worker in Bradford for many years, being a volunteer coordinator and an English language teacher in various parts of the world. Her educational background includes a MSc in Sustainable Development and a PhD with the theoretical focus on environmental behaviour change.

Cathy is a recognised practitioner in urban design and an associate of the RTPI. She gained a master’s in urban design at Newcastle University. Cathy’s role at Ryder involves research, masterplanning, public realm, site and contextual analysis, stakeholder engagement and planning. She also leads historic research, heritage statements and impact assessments, working closely with conservation officers, Historic England and other consultees. Cathy is a Building with Nature approved assessor and Healthy Streets Foundation practitioner, and is passionate about creating healthy, sustainable places which enhance wellbeing. She contributes to Ryder’s research on placemaking for health and wellbeing, including presenting at the SALUS Healthy City Design Congress.

Architect and Urban Planner (Polytechnic University of Madrid, UPM). Expert in International Cooperation (UPM) with studies in urban resilience, green infrastructure, and human rights. Consultant for Innovation for Healthy Cities at Bax. Previously worked on architecture and urbanism projects in offices in Portugal, Spain, and England, and internationally with organisations such as UN-Habitat and Spanish Red Cross on sustainable urban development projects. Among them, she led housing and WASH projects in Haiti and collaborated with ICLEI in the European Urban LEDS program. As part of the Healthy Cities team, she contributes to various projects developing strategies for urban health and Health Impact Assessment.

Charles Kwaku-Odoi DL MFPH is Chief Executive of the Caribbean & African Health Network (CAHN), a leading national Black health organisation at the forefront of reducing health Inequalities and wider disparities. He is a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Greater Manchester, an honorary member of the esteemed Faculty of Public Health (FPH), and the honorary Ecumenical Canon at Manchester Cathedral. He has trustees and board roles including the NHS Race and Health Observatory; Manchester Foundation Trust Council of Governors; and Government SAGE Ethnicity Subgroup. Charles was named in the Health Service Journal 50 most influential Black Asian and Minority Ethnic people in health in the UK for two years running (2022 & 2023). Charles is a Patient Public Voice Partner for NHS HIV Clinical Reference Group and NHS Quality Governance Group. He is a great advocate for equity and fairness across a range of important health and wellbeing issues for people of the Caribbean and African Diaspora. He is involved in work that influences the research, policy, and practice at regional and national level. His special interest includes civic and democratic participation, blood & organ donation HIV, domestic violence, modern slavery and hate crime. Reading, walking, and football are his hobbies. X (former Twitter): @charleskod LinkedIn: Charles Kwaku-Odoi

Chris Brown is a founder director of the London Doughnut Economy Coalition CIC, helping London to play its part in an economy that ‘delivers society’s needs within the planet’s limits. He is also the founder of Climatise, using blended finance to deliver rewilding, retrofit and renewables. Through Climatise he is a director of fuel poverty and renewables community benefit society SE1 Solar and of retrofit business Future Fit Homes. He was the founder of urban regeneration BCorps igloo Regeneration which co-founded ‘the world’s first responsible real estate fund’ (United Nations). He also co-founded the Chrysalis Fund which lends to job creating workspace and green development projects in Liverpool City Region. Until 2023 he chaired Creative Space and Dataloft (now Pricehubble) and helped management and shareholders execute successful exits.

Chris has a background in public health and is a Research Programme Director for UKRI population health improvement Healthy Urban Places consortium, and the Healthy Families theme of the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Yorkshire and Humber. Chris is interested in closing the gap between research and practice with specific research interests including social and environmental influences on health, and the participation of the public and professionals in research. Prior to becoming involved public health and research Chris was an emergency planner for local authorities and the NHS.

I trained and practiced as an urban planner in the USA (MIT) before coming to the UK and working in public/private finance for many years, moving into the healthcare space as a funder of PFI hospitals in the NHS. I currently help lead a healthcare business that provides innovative diagnostics and treatments to men with prostate disease. London is a centre of world-class innovation in imaging-led diagnostics and treatments for prostate cancer, and the Focal Therapy Clinic provides access to these innovations so that all men can achieve improved healthcare outcomes. I discuss this in regular blogs & podcasts. My passions for healthcare and planning are at the heart of the “Listen to Locals” campaign, launched in response to the unprecedented scale of new building and development in London and the lack of meaningful engagement with local communities on the impact of this development on their health and wellbeing. I devote each day to using my knowledge & experience in health, planning, digital & comms to improve healthcare and peoples' access to it.

Courtney Shaw has a Master’s degree in Public Health, with a specialization in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. During her time at PRC, she worked in the People, Health & Place (PHP) Unit, investigating spatial health equity and how equity indicators can inform research. Her work has contributed to understanding health disparities and developing strategies to reduce them. In the future, Courtney plans to continue working with the PHP Unit and use equitable data to make positive impacts in local communities and beyond. Her commitment to public health is inspiring, and we can’t wait to see the significant contributions she will make in the future.

Dan Shaughnessy IV was born in Stavanger, Norway in 1988. After living in Sweden and England, Dan moved to Houston, Texas with his family where he was introduced to stick welding and various welding tools in the metal shop. As a child, he always had an attraction to form, structure and abstraction. Eventually, this fascination became a search for artistic forms and understanding the qualities metal bestows. He would later attend the school of The School of Art Institute of Chicago. Dan’s move to Chicago in 2008 opened new avenues for exploration in the metal sculpture world. In 2011, Dan began a long term professional liaison while working as an apprentice for Chicago sculptors Boyan Marinov, Mike Helbing, and Terry Karpowicz. It was with this experience that propelled his career as a professional sculptor. Since beginning his career, Dan has worked on close to a dozen large scale figurative public pieces and over 140 public sculpture installations for a variety of mid-west sculptors. Dan continues to collaborate in the Chicago sculptor community and with fellow sculptors affiliated with Chicago Sculpture International. Dan currently lives between New York City and Chicago, creating public and privately commissioned large scale sculptures for clients. Going forward, Dan will be focusing on the balance of sculpture + technology and how to elevate public pieces to landmarks.

I lead the transport strategy and programmes team, which are a key component of the councils climate change direcorate

Dr. Salvo is an associate professor of Health Behavior and Health Education in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education of the College of Education. Dr. Salvo is a physical activity and public health scientist. Through her work, she seeks to understand the role of context on physical activity and health disparities, with a special emphasis on Latin American populations, both in the US and abroad. Her research is motivated by the pursuit of health equity and social justice. Her long-term goal is to produce contextually relevant evidence for reducing spatial health disparities in access to environments that enable physically active, healthy and sustainable lifestyles for all. As is well known in public health, the residential zip code where people live has a stronger influence on their health and economic outcomes than their genetics. Given the scarcity of high-quality research examining the effect of space and place (i.e., social, built and policy environments) on physical activity, health behavior and quality of life outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, and among ethnic and racial minorities in the US, Dr. Salvo's work focuses on filling this critical gap. Dr. Salvo's work takes place both in the U.S. and internationally. In the US, she has led or collaborated in projects based in Texas, Missouri, Alabama, Illinois and California. Internationally, she has led projects and has close working relationships with researchers and institutions across Latin America, and in particular, has strong ties with the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico – the leading public health research institution in Latin America. Dr. Salvo is an active member of multiple highly productive, multi-national research teams focused on developing and applying state-of-the-art physical activity and spatial epidemiological methods for advancing globally-focused physical activity and built environment research. Some of these studies include: the International Physical Activity and the Environment Network study (IPEN), the Our Voice Global Network Project, the Lancet Series for Physical Activity working group, the Lancet Global Indicators for Urban Livability and Sustainability working group, the Global Observatory for Physical Activity and the Global Observatory for Healthy and Sustainable Cities. In addition, Dr. Salvo has served as an advisor for several local, state, and national departments of chronic disease prevention/healthy lifestyle promotion/urbanism and health; funding agencies (e.g., Fogarty International Center/NIH; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation); and international organizations, including the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization. In parallel to her research on space, place and physical activity, a critical priority of Dr. Salvo is to build capacity for physical activity and public health research in settings or among populations for which contextually-relevant evidence to guide policy action is lacking the most. Dr. Salvo has led several training programs to install and enhance research capacity in physical activity and public health in Latin America. In 2021, she organized the first Latin American Congress on Physical Activity and Health Research. Prior to joining UT Austin, Dr. Salvo held academic appointments at Washington University in St. Louis, UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, and Stanford University. She earned her Ph.D. from Emory University and her Bachelor in Science from Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City, Mexico).

Dr Dena Kasraian is an Irène Curie fellow and an Assistant Professor of Urbanism and Urban Architecture at the Department of the Built Environment, Eindhoven University of Technology. She has experience in the fields of architecture, urban design and planning and transport and is interested in conducting multidisciplinary research between them. She investigates (long-term) transport-land use-travel behaviour interactions and the role of spatial policies, the health implications of transport, active mobility, active ageing, and (digitally-enabled) behaviour change in the built environment, using geographic information systems and quantitative spatial analysis. She has been awarded several grants and prizes, including the Irène Curie fellowship for talented female scientists, BOOST! Education innovation fund, and two Eindhoven-Wageningen-Utrecht alliance funds.

Dominic Stead is Professor of Land Use and Transport Planning at Aalto University, Finland. His main research and teaching interests focus on processes of policy-making and the impacts of policies, particularly in relation to urban and regional planning. His principle areas of focus include i) Processes of national and international policy transfer in the area of urban and regional policy – how policy concepts, instruments and procedures are transposed from cities to cities, nationally and internationally. Examples of recent projects include iTOD (Implementing Transit Oriented Development), funded by NWO, and PLEEC (Planning for Energy Efficient Cities), funded under FP7; and ii) comparative studies of urban and regional policy and governance – understanding and explaining the variations in governance of similar issues in different countries. Examples of recent projects include COMPASS (Comparative Analysis of Territorial Governance and Spatial Planning Systems in Europe) and TANGO (Territorial Approaches for New Governance), funded under the ESPON programme.

Douglas Salcedo Anez is co-founder of Nature Vibezzz, a charity that organises forest school sessions as well as environmental and practical nature conservation sessions across London for young people and their families. Nature Vibezzz used to increase internal capacity. Activities run through the forest school are popular and there is a need to be able to scale the level of delivery into other areas such as Burgess Park, Galleywall Nature Reserve, Streatham Common, and Knights Hill Wood. They scaled their internal capacity Activities run through the forest school are popular and there is a need to be able to scale the level of delivery into other areas such as Burgess Park, Galleywall Nature Reserve, Streatham Common, and Knights Hill Wood.

Nathalie Röbbel is the Lead for WHO’s work on Urban Health at the WHO, in the Department on Social Determinants of Health. Prior to this she was leading WHOs work on air pollution and housing in the Department for Environment, Climate Change and Health. One of her main areas of work was the development of WHO Housing and Health Guidelines and WHO’s efforts to address slum upgrading through housing policies and other social policies and interventions. Before joining WHO HQ, she worked as a technical officer at the WHO Regional Office for Europe, in Bonn and Copenhagen, where she was responsible for environmental health performance reviews and involved in several urban health related projects. Ms Röbbel holds a Ph.D. from the Rheinische-Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn, Germany.

Shira is an urban development planner and social anthropologist focusing on delivering place-based spatial and social sustainability. As part of Ramboll’s Regenerative Cities Team, she leads on urban wellbeing strategies for liveable and resilient urban environments that sustain both human and planetary health. She develops and supports the implementation of strategies based on integrated and vulnerability-sensitive development, design for behaviour change, and local social value approaches. Shira holds a doctorate from the Future of Cities programme at the University of Oxford. She sits on the Advisory Board for the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Urban Wellbeing and delivers an annual talk for the University College London’s MSc Health in Urban Development and the University of Cambridge’s Future of Roads Programme.

Dr Ed Kirton-Darling is a solicitor (non-practising) and Senior Lecturer in the University of Bristol Law School. His work in public/administrative law has a particular focus on housing, homelessness and urban development in a wider context of social welfare and human rights. As part of the TRUUD project, he has worked closely with the Office for Health Inequalities and Disparities and local authorities across England to encourage more effective use of Health Impact Assessment in urban development processes.

Eleanor’s research interests are in the economics of health and urban environments, and especially in metrics which can help decision making to improve the places where we live. Her focus is on the societal costs of health, including direct and indirect costs such as healthcare and productivity costs, and non-market valuation techniques such as stated preference and contingent valuation. For TRUUD she is creating a model to quantify impacts of unhealthy urban development, Health Appraisal of Urban Systems (HAUS).

Elise is a masterplanner and Managing Director at Prior + Partners. Attuned to the many competing interests at play in the development process, she has worked with a mix of public and private sector sector clients, established technology firms, and sustainability-focused property developers in the UK, USA, and France. A broad cultural perspective, and a conviction that well-designed built environments have the ability to transform our lives, underpin Elise’s work. Her portfolio spans large-scale regeneration schemes, neighbourhood planning studies, and open space and public realm design strategies, with current projects in London, Bristol and for Google in California. A licensed member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, she studied Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Ellen is a Research Associate based in the Institute of Population Health at the University of Liverpool. She is interested in systems thinking, co-production, and urban health policy. Her role within the GroundsWell Consortium leverages local partnerships to identify opportunities to support development of and evaluate green and blue space interventions. Ellen is finishing her PhD which focuses on how local levers can impact access to food in Liverpool. She also has a rich background working at the intersection of urban planning and public health via Health Impact Assessments and other HiAP tools.

Elly is the Science Communicator and Research Impact Officer for the GroundsWell Consortium Liverpool hub, with emphasis in impact and knowledge exchange. She is based in the Institute of Population Health, University of Liverpool. Her background is in impact, particularly in health and life sciences. 

Dr Emma Bird is a Senior Lecturer in Public Health at UWE Bristol. Emma is an active member of UWE Bristol's Centre for Public Health and Wellbeing, with broad research interests in health and place and evaluation in health and wellbeing.

Emma is a Strategic Partnership and Programme Manager for the multiagency Carlisle Partnership. She works closely with a range of key stakeholders across the Carlisle District; but also locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Emma works across a variety of strands to enable, encourage and facilitate joined up working and tackle complex ‘wicked issues’ within the area; whilst leading and developing place-based change/working. She has previously worked in Public Health, the private sector and as a research associate at York St John University. Most recently she has returned from a secondment with Public Health England and the newly formed Office of Health Improvement and Disparities, where she had the opportunity to work regionally and support the development of national work, in turn influencing national policy.

Dr Emma Halliday is a Senior Research Fellow based at Lancaster University and joint-Chief Investigator for PHIRST LiLaC. She spent four years working with NHS Health Scotland’s policy evaluation team and has worked closely with local authorities and community organisations to deliver evaluations of place-based interventions including regeneration, air quality, physical activity and community engagement initiatives. Her areas of expertise include: qualitative methods, public involvement and social determinants of health. Dr Emma Halliday - NIHR Public Health Interventions Research Studies Teams (PHIRST) e.halliday@lancaster.ac.uk

Eugen Resendiz studies the place-base and spatio-temporal factors that influence physical activity and other health-related behaviors to reduce health disparities. Eugen is passionate about promoting a more robust multidisciplinary work between public health and urban design using methodologies from both study areas. Her main area of research is the context-specific relations between the macro-level influences (policy and urban environment) of health through understanding geospatial social and health disparities, with an emphasis on Latin American populations.

Dr Ffion Carney is a Senior Data Scientist within the AtkinsRéalis Building Design Research & Innovation team. She specialises in urban analytics, geospatial analysis, and social science research. She holds a PhD in Geographic Information Science from the Consumer Data Research Centre, UCL, where she explored the use of big data to understand urban mobility patterns and transport disadvantage in vulnerable populations. Her current research focus is on the use of open data and geospatial analysis to address challenges and inequalities in urban environments. She leads a number of research initiatives and has extensive experience of applying GIS and geospatial analysis across large masterplanning projects to inform social and green infrastructure planning.

Fran Lobel is a project manager at Repowering London, a not-for-profit community energy development organisation. She led on participant engagement for Home Monitoring for Wellbeing (HMW), a pilot study exploring practical, community-based approaches to facilitating low-income households to improve their indoor air quality and wellbeing at home. Fran lives and works in the community where HMW and other Repowering London schemes are embedded; she has provided energy support to residents, and training for health and social care professionals on consumer energy rights and the health-impacts of energy crisis. She has particular expertise in rights and protections for prepayment meter households.

A Senior Social Scientist at HDR, Francesqca Jimenez investigates the ways environments impact human health, happiness, and well-being. Francesqca holds a Master of Science in Applied Research in Human-Environment Relations from Cornell University’s Department of Design and Environmental Analysis with a minor in Organizational Behavior, and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, English and Women’s Studies from the University of California-Los Angeles. Her primary research interests are environmental psychology, linking environments to healthy behaviors, and advancing social equity through design. In her work, she endeavors to understand how built, natural, and social environments affect behavior, cognition, emotion, identity, and representation.

Professor Frank Kee's interests span a wide range of subjects in epidemiology, public health, health services research and complexity science and in finding better ways to evaluate the impact of our academic endeavours, both methodologically and in terms of knowledge mobilisation that can impact policy and practice.

With over 15 years of design experience Gabriel has a passion for content creation focused on social and educational content. Based in Hackney, East London, his diverse and socially aware environment has shaped his career and community involvement. Gabriel has always been an advocate for community issues and participated in various projects to promote a better way of life. He is part of the Leaders of Tomorrow scheme, mentoring young people, and serves as the creative director for Change in Youth, collaborating with schools and colleges in East London. In 2015, he founded Geroff Visuals to foster diversity and social inclusion in animation and commercial media, partnering with organizations like the NHS, Loughborough University, and The Africa Advocacy Agency. His animated videos, used in community research projects, have received acclaim, including a showcase at the Engage Live conference in Bristol.

Gemma Hyde is a Projects and Policy Manager for healthier place-making at the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA). Gemma supports local authorities in all aspects of healthier place-making including how to embed health and wellbeing into development plans, the promotion and implementation of 20-minute neighbourhoods, child-friendly and intergenerational approaches, supporting specific initiatives such as school streets and providing training and workshops for officers, elected members and wider community groups. Prior to joining the TCPA, Gemma worked in various planning and public health roles with a number of local authorities and third sector organisations including Milton Keynes Council and the National Childbirth Trust.

Dr Gemma Moore is an Associate Professor (Teaching) and Senior Research Fellow, at the Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering at the Bartlett, UCL. Gemma is an interdisciplinary, applied social scientist, whose research and education focuses on developing approaches and methodologies for the collective production of knowledge in the field of sustainable, healthy urban environments. This involves practices of participation and engagement in research and education processes. Between 2020-2023 Gemma was part of a large collective research team on the ‘Complex Urban Systems for Sustainability and Health’ programme, which explored, and evaluated, how different forms of evidence are negotiated and applied in complex multi-stakeholder urban health initiatives. Gemma is a member of the Bartlett Faculty leadership team as Faculty Impact Lead. She also leads, with UCL colleagues and Compost London, an engaged learning programme (the Evaluation Exchange) which supports community organisations and teams to build research and evaluation capacity.

Georgi Byrne-Watts, Quality and Research Lead for The Life Rooms (Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust) Georgi was appointed as Quality and Research Lead for The Life Rooms in 2021, to evaluate the impact of up-stream, preventative support on the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities. Leading a team in quality improvement initiatives, and research and development, Georgi’s work is integral in demonstrating the impact and benefits of The Life Rooms’ Social Model of Health and supports innovative ways of improving health and wellbeing for socially deprived communities. Prior to leading on Quality and Research at The Life Rooms, Georgi worked as an English Teacher and Lead Researcher in a secondary school and has achieved BA (Hons) in English Literature and Philosophy, MA in Management, and PGCE in Secondary English. The Life Rooms and Access Elemental’s Mid Mersey Interoperability project demonstrates the benefits of harnessing digital innovation and developments by linking clinical and non-clinical systems to connect clinicians directly to a social model of health, improving the speed, effectiveness and quality of referrals to maximise care and Service User experience. Follow Georgi on Twitter: @gjbwatts

Gerry Tierney, Associate Principal and Director Emeritus of Perkins&Will’s Mobility Lab, is studying the evolution of urban mobility and its impact on the public realm. A founder in 2009 of Mobility and the City’s REDCAR project, Gerry has collaborated with UC Berkeley’s TSRC on workshops addressing multiple aspects of evolving urban mobility. He has moderated at MIT’s 2015 Disrupting Mobility Summit and presented on the impacts of emerging mobility at ASLA’s and APA’s annual conferences, as well as at the University of Oregon’s SCI Urbanism Next Conferences. In 2020 he was a member of the University of California’s Institute of Transportation Studies expert committee for the Future of Public Transit and Shared Mobility Scenario Planning Workshop. He is also the author of chapters in “Shared Mobility and Automated Vehicles”, published in 2022 by IET, addressing the potential impacts of AV’s on the public realm. He continues his studies into the impact of evolving mobility on urban design, and placemaking, in addition to studying the potential impacts of a post-COVID hybrid work environment on suburbia.

Hannah is a Research Associate at the University of Liverpool, working within the GroundsWell Consortium, providing data science support for exploring the role of urban green and blue spaces in tackling health inequalities. Hannah completed a BA (Hons) Geography degree at Lancaster University, followed by a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree and PhD at the University of Glasgow. Her PhD used quantitative methods to explore barriers to green space use, with a particular focus on individuals with chronic health conditions.

Hannah E. Murdock is a PhD candidate in the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, focusing on policy measures and behaviour change for decarbonising transport while maximising co-benefits. She also serves as co-Lead Author for the SLOCAT Transport and Climate Change Global Status Report and is a Research Partner with REN21 - the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century. In her more than 12 years working in the energy and transport sectors, she has held various research roles working within NGOs, international organisations, academia, and consulting. She has authored or co-authored over 30 publications, contributed as an advisor or reviewer to innumerable others, served on several international advisory boards, guest lectured in postgraduate programmes in Europe and the US, and has made frequent presentations and keynote addresses at conferences around the world.

Harry is an RTPI-accredited built environment professional, with experience in town planning, development project management, and politically high-pressured national programme implementation across both the public and private sectors. He is an Associate Director at Archus with a deep interest and knowledge in Primary Care, specialising in the interface between healthcare planning and development.

A chartered town planner and developer, Harry specialises in pre-planning / strategic sustainability, wellbeing, and energy work. His interests lie in social sustainability, wellbeing and loneliness. He has won awards for research exploring the linkages between pro-environmental behaviour and happiness. He believes there is an opportunity to employ robust social science methods to better understand the true impact of development. He is also a WELL AP.

Heeseo Rain Kwon is a Lecturer (Asst. Prof) in Geographic Data Science (Human Geography) at the University of Liverpool. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the UCL Bartlett School of Planning where she is currently an Honorary Lecturer. Her doctoral research at the University of Cambridge focused on using behavioural theories, agent-based modelling (ABM) and GIS-based spatial analysis for simulating urban change. Rain's research interests currently focus on the use of new forms of data along with theories, and behavioural modelling including ABM and human-environment interaction modelling.

Helen Pineo, PhD MRTPI is an urban planner and Research Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on how urban policy and development can support health and sustainability. She contributes to the evidence base about why and how to do healthy urbanism by using transdisciplinary approaches and amplifying the needs of under-represented communities and the planet. Her current and past research involves participatory, systems thinking and other methods to study: urban transformative change, housing and health, urban health metrics and evidence use in government. Her book, Healthy Urbanism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) provides a multi-scalar conceptualization of healthy urban environments, integrating equity, inclusion and sustainability. Helen lived and worked in London for 16 years, most recently as an Associate Professor at University College London, and previously as an urban planner working on projects in the UK and internationally.

Jack’s research considers how the reform of political institutions can lead to more effective public policy. In recent years, this has been focused on decentralisation and spatial policy in England, asking how the UK’s changing multi-level politics might enable more integrated, strategic, democratic, and preventative policymaking. At TRUUD, Jack focuses on how preventative health can be embedded in political discourse and realised though devolution and cross-government working.

Jack Skillen has been integrating fields of place management, sustainability and active travel since completing his MSc in City, Space and Society in 2004. In his role as Director of Sustainability and Place at the London Bridge business improvement district, he set up the Bikes for Business programme in 2018, alongside other priorities of green infrastructure, the Low Line and working towards being a net zero business district. On Saturdays, he coaches under 15 football.

James Bellinger is a chartered environmentalist with 15 years’ experience in leading air quality assessments in the UK and overseas. James manages air quality and odour assessments for a range of clients and across a wide range of spatial scales, from small developments to the city scale. James has a particular interest in mitigation options for air quality and works with clients and stakeholders to identify solutions which will provide suitable mitigation to local air quality issues. He is experienced with project management, and delivery of complex messages about air quality to a range of stakeholders. James has experience of working across a wide range of air quality topics (everything from aviation, waste, industry, construction, roads and monitoring). He has developed tools for assessing air quality improvements, developed best practice guidance for air quality design interventions and led position papers on behalf of the Institute of Air Quality Management.

I am currently using my 25 year plus experience to develop an International Consultancy UPN with a long-standing colleague and world class architect & designer Jeremy Salmon. UPN is an agile creative studio bringing proven, specialist urban expertise, talent and innovators together to solve urban challenges for and with other Consultancies. We are testing and developing the UPN approach alongside other initiatives (UrbanHive) through a range of projects, collaborations and mentoring. If you are interested in finding out more please feel free to connect through Linkedin.

James is a Portfolio Manager at Impact on Urban Health, an independent urban health foundation committed to building health equity and making cities healthier places for everyone to live. An On Purpose Associate, he previously spent 10 years in the private sector building a sports agency and has spent time living in the Caribbean, London and Melbourne. He led on the development and implementation of Impact on Urban Health’s climate strategy and has mobilised funding and resource at the intersection of health, racial equity, and climate justice. He currently sits in the innovation team where his work focuses on the future of urban health, with a specific focus on community-led asset ownership as a mechanism for building wealth in underserved communities.

Experienced project manager with highly transferrable project and cost-control skills across multiple industries. Over my career I have delivered profitable, timely and compliant projects to meet customer needs worldwide in defence, automotive, energy and currently; the public sector.

Professor Jennifer McKinley has a consistent sustained record of more than 150 peer reviewed international publications and contributions which have had a strategic impact on the research agenda in mathematical geoscience in physical geography, health and the environment.

Really excited to have now started UrbanPlaceNetwork (UPN) with my long-standing colleague and world class masterplanner James Rayner. UrbanPlaceNetwork is an agile consultancy with collaboration, shared research, engendered creativity and sustainable enterprise at its core. It has a number of ongoing collaboration with major design, engineering, development and public realm custodians throughout the world working with communities, developing partnerships and friends in a shared endeavour for positive change through development. Prior to this I was a principal and director at Broadway Malyan for nearly 30 years’, having enjoyed positions on the holdings board, as trustee to the EOT, as chair of the three fantastic studios in APAC and been responsible for starting both BM's Shanghai and Madrid studios. I am a highly motivated and experienced designer with extensive experience of the built environment and placemaking. As a UK trained professional, my ability to create and lead international design studios across the world has given me the opportunity to develop a diverse set of expertise across disciplines and sectors, including retail, education, hospitality and city-scale masterplanning leveraging my international expertise with projects and shared collaborations across the world.

Director of Social and Behavioral Sciences at HDR, Dr. Jeri Brittin leads a transdisciplinary team of social, behavioral, and health scientists whose work informs optimal strategies, planning, organizational and design decision-making. With her background in design, doctoral training in social and behavioral health, and experience leading multi-disciplinary teams, Jeri is passionate about developing strategies, systems and environments that promote positive and equitable outcomes. Her work focuses on wellness and behavioral outcomes related to environmental and social determinants in buildings and campuses, neighborhoods and cities, and organizations. Dr. Brittin maintains an active national and international research collaboration network, is a frequent speaker, has published numerous refereed articles, and serves on several national committees focused on design and health.

Jessica Allen and Michael Marmot have worked together since 2011 to build the IHE and strengthen action on health equity and the social determinants across the UK and around the world. In her role as Deputy Director she has shaped the strategic direction of the Institute and overseen its work and development. She has worked closely with international organisations, national and local governments, businesses and the economic sector, third sector organisations and public health and health care systems. She has published widely on the social determinants of health and led much of the Institute’s work. She leads the IHE’s work with global organisations including the UN, leading the current WHO Special Initiative, UNAIDS, and led the production of WHO regional health equity reports including the Eastern Mediterranean Region Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Commission on Equity and Health Inequalities in the Americas and the Review of Social Determinants of Health and the Health Divide in the WHO European Region. She was co-author of the 2010 Marmot Review Fair Society, Healthy Lives, the 2020 Marmot Review 10 Years On report and Build Back Fairer: The COVID-19 Marmot review.  Jessica has also been involved in national reviews including most recently for Norway, Hong Kong and Taiwan and is also involved with Marmot Places in the UK. She has led many of the Institute’s evidence reviews on a wide range of social determinants of health and health inequality assessments. She is a member of several advisory groups in England and internationally. Prior to her work at IHE she was head of Health and Social Care at IPPR, Research Fellow in Public Health at the Kings Fund, and worked at UNICEF and the London School of Economics. She has published and broadcast widely and holds a doctorate from the University of London.

Managing Director and Animation Producer Jide Johnson started Aniboxx studios out of the frustration of noticing a lack of underrepresented characters in Animated content. Working with brands such as The NHS and the Global Health Workplaces company, Aniboxx has always been helping brands in the health space communicate their messages, which is why it made perfect sense to produce the three animated stories we did for Impact On Urban Health. Aniboxx launched Little Miss Hug for the Mr Men brand with an advert, Written, produced and Directed by Jide. Aniboxx then began to work with Cartoon Network (Turner Broadcasting) on animation and content for their flagship shows across 5 main channels, for 2.5 years. Jide then realized he had a passion for telling his own stories and has since gone on to tell a number of stories based on the underrepresented, for the big screen. Aniboxx worked on a documentary called “Spending Black”, featured on BBC iPlayer in Oct 2021, focused on the power of spending money with Black owned businesses. Since then, the Aniboxx team have won a place on the Sony Animation Pictures talent league to develop their first 2D animated series Family Britannia about a British born Nigerian Big Tech Genius. Following the series development, Jide collaborated with the Milkshake / Nickelodeon team to write, produce and voice narrate Aniboxx’ fīrst in house documentary “Where are The Smart Black Boys?” exploring the lack of intelligent black males featured in children’s content. Jide has recently produced a short movie about a Ghanaian Software Engineer: “UNCLE” for Channel 4’s Random Acts platform. This can now be viewed on 4OD. Aniboxx is currently producing four episodes of the American Animated series “The Tuttle Twins” (Season 3). Jide also launched the “Aniboxx Access internship scheme” for up and coming 2D character animators, helping close the UK animation skills gap.

Jo operates at the intersection of people, place, technology and data. Focusing on digital innovation and multidisciplinary collaboration, she aims to create more pleasurable, sustainable and person-centred environments through digital placemaking practices. Her sector experience includes health, education, culture, travel and the built environment.   Jo is Co-Founding Director of the Association of Collaborative Design, Director of Digital Innovation and Research at Calvium, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Institute of Place Management, as well as an Expert on the UK government's High Streets Task Force.

Born in Sao Paulo in 1974 and raised in Lisbon, where he moved in 1977, João Branco studied Architecture and Town Planning at Lisbon Technical University’s Faculty of Architecture (UTL), Portugal, and Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura del Vallés, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain, as an Erasmus student. He graduated in 2000. Working as a town planner and urban designer, he discovered the water features theme as a powerful urban design tool to enhance public spaces. So, from an early stage, he started working on integrating the water element into architecture, landscape design and public art projects. During the last 20 years, he has conceived, developed and supported hundreds of multi-scale water feature projects worldwide, primarily for retail, hospitality, public plazas, roundabouts and theme parks. Also, having worked in international companies, such as GHESA and now OASE, has been crucial to building a solid worldwide experience, allowing him to speak at several professional events, attend multiple international exhibitions and constantly support global partners in the conception of innovative & memorable fountain experiences. • Link to LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcgbranco/ • Link to Professional Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/publicshape/

John Wright is a doctor and epidemiologist with a background in hospital medicine and public health in the UK and in Africa. He established and leads the Bradford Institute for Health Research and Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Research, working to speed up translation of medical research into practice and policy. He is the Director of Research for the City of Bradford and Director of the NIHR Yorkshire and Humber Applied Research Collaboration. He is Visiting Professor in Clinical Epidemiology at the Universities of York, Leeds and Bradford and has authored of over 500 papers and three textbooks and been awarded over £150 million in research award funding, £50 million as chief investigator In 2007 he set up the Born in Bradford (BiB) cohort study which is following the lives of over 13,000 families as their children grow up. Evidence from BiB studies has informed local, national international policies and led to improvements in clinical practice and public health as well as a successful City of Culture award. In 2016 he set up Born in Bradford’s Better Start – the world’s first experimental birth cohort - to test new approaches to providing the best support in the crucial period of early life. In 2019 he established ActEarly to develop a whole systems City Collaboratory approach to improving the health and life chances of children from deprived communities in London and Yorkshire. He has worked to develop sustainable public health programmes in Africa for 30 years including setting up and running an Ebola Treatment Centre for Doctors of the World in Sierra Leone during the Ebola epidemic. He was the research and scientific lead for Clinical and District Gold command during the COVID19 pandemic and set up the COVID19 Scientific Advisory group (CSAG). He has reported for the BBC on programmes covering Born in Bradford, Ebola and most recently The NHS Frontline podcast.

Johnny is an experienced architect, urban designer and planning professional. Before joining the Tower Hamlets Public Health team, he worked as an architect at Herzog & de Meuron in Switzerland and the UK on major international projects. He studied at the University of Cambridge, the Royal College of Art, and the University of Westminster. In his current role, he is responsible for the integration of Health in Spatial Planning. Using a combination of Public Health evidence, planning expertise and urban design knowledge, Johnny improves health outcomes through the planning process at borough-level. He also contributes to this agenda at a London-wide level as part of the NHS HUDU Health Impact Assessment (HIA) Working Group, and nationally as part of the OHID Spatial Planning for Health workforce. He has been an invited speaker and presented his experience integrating Health in Spatial Planning on behalf of the Local Government Association, the TCPA, and Built Environment for the Future.

Jordan is part of our Research and Engagement Team. He currently works on the Building Health Equity project, leading on stakeholder interviews and analysis. Alongside this he is working with the rest of the team to develop and update the Quality of Life Foundation’s Framework. He is particularly interested in the impact of the Foundation’s work for disabled communities, and how disability and its relationship to health can inform better homes and neighbourhoods. Beyond the Foundation, Jordan is a researcher, writer, designer, and educator working at the intersections of architectural history, design pedagogy, disability, and spatial justice. He currently co-leads a Design Think Tank at the London School of Architecture. In 2022 he co-founded disability-led research collective Dis with James Zatka-Haas, exploring disability, storytelling, and the built environment.

Over a career in research and policy, José Siri has developed and applied systems approaches to urban and planetary health, focusing on leveraging science for healthy development, devising simple systems tools to catalyse better decision-making, and improving understanding of complex challenges. His experience, which spans five continents, includes time at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health, and the Wellcome Trust, and extensive engagement with researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, along with policy briefs and commentaries in publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the Global Sustainable Development Report. He currently consults for the World Bank and the World Health Organization and holds advisory roles with the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, Future Earth, CDP, and a variety of urban and planetary health research projects. His work has touched on urban studies, climate and health, sustainable development, systems thinking, transdisciplinarity, epidemiology, ecology, infectious disease, public health, and malaria control.

An urban geographer focusing on the relationship between urbanisation and health outcomes at the community level. Josh helps run Centric Lab, a non-profit organisation prototyping ways to use health-based scientific evidence to support justice movements, surface and socialise non-western epistemologies and create language to articulate the injustices felt by many communities about our shared health. Using neuroscience and environmental data to identify how biological inequity contributes to poor health outcomes in neighbourhoods and peoples that have been racialised and marginalised, Centric Lab use this research to build open-access community tools, create new narratives and framings of health, and provide organisations with expertise and insights on health and place.

Dr Kathy McLean has decades of experience in clinical and system leadership in Derbyshire and nationally. She was executive Medical Director at the former Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for over six years. Before that she was also a consultant physician at the trust from 1994 until 2009. Dr McLean was the Medical Director at the former NHS Trust Development Authority for three years up to 2016 and prior to this she was the Clinical Transitions Director, helping to build the NHS Commissioning Board, which is now NHS England. Her work has focused on improving quality by building clinical leadership and expertise across the system, supporting the most challenged organisations and leading change. Dr McLean was chair of University Hospitals Derby and Burton until taking up her role with NHS Derby and Derbyshire Integrated Care Board. She was also a non-executive director at Barts Health and Barking Havering and Redbridge NHS Trusts. Additionally she is chair of the NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board and Integrated Care Partnership and she is chair of the NHS Confederation’s Integrated Care System Network board.

Dr Kimon Krenz is a Senior Research Associate at the Bartlett School of Architecture and a member of the Space Syntax Laboratory at University College London (UCL), United Kingdom. He earned his PhD in Urban Space and Computation from UCL. His research utilises computational methods to quantify and analyse the built environment, focusing on how space influences human behaviour. He is particularly interested in using spatial data science to uncover social, economic, health, and spatial inequalities, applying this knowledge to inform evidence-based urban planning and policy-making. In addition to his academic work, Dr Krenz has experience as an architect, urban planner, and consultant for medium to large-scale urban development projects in Germany, which have received several architecture awards. @KimonKrenz

Dr Kristen MacAskill is an Associate Professor in Engineering, Environment and Sustainable Development at the Department of Engineering. She is a Fellow and Engineering Director of Studies at St Edmund's College. Throughout her career, Kristen's interests have centred on themes of disaster risk management, post-disaster reconstruction, sustainable development of cities and resilience of infrastructure systems. She has four engineering-based degrees and before returning to a role in academia, Kristen worked for several years as a consulting engineer in both the water and transport sectors. Her industry experience covers various areas of infrastructure development, including: strategic level options assessment, post-earthquake damage assessment, infrastructure design, project management and sustainability assessment. She now specialises in systems analysis to advance approaches for managing risk and system resilience. Using cross-disciplinary research methods she investigates governance issues in the management of critical infrastructure and the delivery of major projects. Kristen is currently involved in Royal Academy of Engineering and Lloyd's Register Foundation Safer Complex Systems programme (https://www.raeng.org.uk/global/international-partnerships/engineering-x/safer-complex-systems). She is a founding editorial board member of a new IOP Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability journal, which was launched late in 2020 (https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/2634-4505). Kristen has led various initiatives for the Resilience Shift since it was established in 2017 and has ongoing involvement with this industry-oriented initiative. The Resilience Shift is an international programme created by Lloyd's Register Foundation and Arup, with the goal of facilitating a shift towards resilience in critical infrastructure sectors (https://www.resilienceshift.org/securing-our-future-through-resilient-infrastructure/) Supervised PhD research covers themes of climate adaptation, critical infrastructure resilience and socio-technical analysis of infrastructure service provision. Dr MacAskill leads teaching in Resilience and leads the MPhil ESD Client Consultancy programme where student teams work with businesses, NGOs and other stakeholders on consultancy style projects.

UPDATED 29/5/24: Laura Vaughan is Director of the Space Syntax Lab, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. She has extensive experience of research into the relationship between urban form and society using space syntax methods to consider some of the most critical aspects of cities and society, ranging from spatial inequalities and health, poverty and housing, to economic and social vitality. Her research has established theoretically that spatial form needs to be understood as a contributing factor in the creation of patterns of integration and segregation in cities. It has also established methodologically that there is a need to develop descriptively rich methods for analysing historic socio-economic changes to cities - including both spatial as well as political processes. In addition to extensive research and teaching activities, Professor Vaughan is regularly invited to disseminate knowledge to policy-makers. She is a member of the West Yorkshire Scientific Advisory Group and Chair of the International Space Syntax Executive Committee. Professor Vaughan was elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 2005 and subsequently elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2015. Most recently she gave evidence to the House of Lords Built Environment Committee on the future of high streets. OLD: Laura Vaughan is Professor of Urban Form and Society and the Director of the Space Syntax Laboratory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. She completed a Bachelor of Design at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem in 1989. From 1988 onwards she worked at Shlomo Aronson Landscape Architects and then for Yoram Fogel Architects, both in Jerusalem, Israel. She also worked as an illustrator for the David Kroyanker series of books on the architecture of Jerusalem. Laura returned to London in 1992 to take an MSc in Advanced Architectural Studies at the Bartlett, UCL. She subsequently studied for an EPSRC funded PhD in Architecture (completed 1999) while working as a Research Associate and Company Secretary at Space Syntax Ltd. Laura joined the Space Syntax Lab in 2001 as a lecturer and MSc programme director. She was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2007 and to Professor in 2011. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 2005. She was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2015. In addition to her extensive research and teaching activities, Laura is regularly invited to disseminate knowledge to industry, policy-makers and the general public.

Liane is a “Considerate Urbanist” and is an urban planner by background and social entrepreneur in practice. She has been a consultant and writer on the broad area of urban sustainability for over twenty years. Her focus is on the social future of cities and how we live in and experience urban space. She writes about the emergence of the social city and “Considerate Urbanism” - moving us from car-based to care-based urbanism. Considerate urbanism is a movement, mindset and method for more considerate urban experiences futures, and behaviours to emerge for people planet. Liane specialises in building positive social outcomes from the built environment through the businesses and organisations she has created (Mend and Considerate Urbanism) and the women’s leadership organisation she has founded (Urbanistas). She combines her personal interest in the social dynamics of cities and the future of cities, with her professional skills in strategy, policy, collaboration, and project delivery. Liane has a strong academic and professional background in the social impact of the built environment, and is regularly asked to speak, chair, write and participate, and to mentor others.

Lisa is a Senior Research Fellow / Embedded Researcher working at the Bradford Institute of Health Research (BIHR) and the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council (CBMDC). Her work aims to support the use of research and evaluation in local government decision-making. Lisa particularly focuses on supporting ‘real-time’ research and evaluation of place-based interventions to understand the impact on health and wellbeing.

Liz is a chemist by training and has extensive experience of working at the academic-industry interface. She was Director of Innovation for the Science & Technology Facilities Research Council before joining the University of Huddersfield and led the development of the national science and innovation campuses in Cheshire and Oxfordshire. She is 3M Professor of Innovation and Director of External Engagement for Huddersfield Business School, identifying opportunities for development of research activity and strategic partnerships. Until December 2020, she was Director of Research an Enterprise for the University and received a Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion for establishing the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre in 2013. In 2017, she was elected Chartered Companion of the Chartered Management Institute. She received an OBE in the 2020 New Years Honours list for services to Business, to Enterprise and to Public and Private Sector Collaboration and is the Regional and Business lead for the University’s major development – the National Health Innovation Campus. Liz is married to Steve and has a daughter Emma and outside work loves to spend her time gardening in her allotment, travelling and researching her family tree.

Lord Andrew Mawson is a leading British social entrepreneur. He was appointed Chairman of Well North Enterprises in 2019 following the success of the Well North programme, which Andrew led from 2015 – 2019. This was a Public Health England initiative bringing together the public and private sectors, and local communities to improve the health of people living in some of the most deprived parts of the North of England. Well North Enterprises has now created 15 Innovation Platforms across the country.​ ​ Andrew is perhaps best known for founding the Bromley-by-Bow Centre in East London, the first working example of a fully integrated primary health care facility in the country. The centre today has over 287 staff, 97 businesses it has built with local people, and is responsible for 55,000 patients across Poplar. The centre is visited by over 2000 people a year from across the country and internationally. The Well North programme has grown out of this 40-year track record and is now taking the principles originally developed at the Bromley by Bow Centre and working with partners to apply them in challenging communities across the country. ​ ​ Andrew, also founded Community Action Network (CAN) in 1997, a national programme for social entrepreneurs, Poplar Harca (one of the country's first housing companies) and Leaside Regeneration Ltd, which brought in over £100 million investment into the Lower Lea Valley. Andrew has now “graduated” from most of these ventures and each of them continues as a successful organisation. He has now created Andrew Mawson Partnerships (AMP) as a vehicle both to grow and replicate his approach and successes, and today runs a very successful Science Summer School with Professor Brian Cox which is in the process of going national. ​ ​ In 2012, Andrew was made a Freeman of the City of London. He is also the best-selling author of the book, “The Social Entrepreneur: Making Communities Work.” Andrew’s work is also featured in Lord Crisp’s latest book (former CEO of the NHS) ‘Health is made at home; hospitals are for repair’. ​ ​ Andrew and his partners wrote the first paper proposing that the Olympic Games be brought to East London in 2012. He was involved in the Olympic project for 19 years from day one. He was a Director of the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) and then the London Legacy Development Corporation. Andrew Chaired the Regeneration and Community Partnerships Committee for 10 years on both boards, stepping down in 2018. Since the Games this development corporation has planned, developed, and managed the Olympic Park in East London and is creating a lasting legacy from the 2012 Games. The new £1.1billion East Bank campus development has brought to the Park the Victoria and Albert Museum, University College London, the BBC and Sadlers Wells, the London College of Fashion to name a few. This £1.2 bn project was Andrew and Paul Brickell’s original idea in 2006, which was an attempt to build an Innovation District in the heart of the east end of London based on the Bromley principles, bringing together business and social entrepreneurs. The project was backed by the then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, when he was Chairman of the London Legacy Development Corporation. ​ ​ Under the AMP banner, Andrew co-founded One Church 100 Uses CIC and launched the Water City Group to create and implement a vision for East London revitalised by the opportunities of the 21st Century and the 2012 Olympic Games. Andrew was made a life Peer in 2007 in recognition of the social impact of his work, and he now sits as an independent Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords. ​

Lourdes is a public health professional who leads on creating healthy and sustainable places in East Sussex for East Sussex County Council. Lourdes has a background in international development, programme management, sustainability, political science, and sociology which includes a Masters in African Studies from Oxford University. In England, she co-chairs both the national health in all policies network and the southeast regional healthy places (built and natural environment) network. Lourdes and her team work to embed ‘Health in All Policies’ and lead on ‘Creating Healthy Places’ from a public health perspective. Using a ‘whole systems approach’, Lourdes works to influence decisions made in sectors other than ‘health’ that can positively or negatively affect the wider determinants of health and health inequalities. This includes a specialist focus on ‘planning for health/designing in health’ and planetary health. Lourdes provides expertise on health impact assessments and national strategic infrastructure projects.

Lydia Ramsden is an Urban Designer at Stride Treglown, specialising in design for health. She has a background in architecture and planning with an MA in urban design. Her professional experience focuses primarily on residential, higher education and urban regeneration. Lydia has a strong passion for public health and well-being within the built environment, notably that of restorative urbanism. Through in-depth research, as part of her master’s thesis, Lydia explored how the impact of the sensory landscape across the various urban morphological layers can have a positive effect on the restorative nature of place-making. She demonstrated how having a holistic approach to urban design and health can create a greater understanding for how designers can create people centric, restorative places. Following this research, Lydia is continuing to contribute towards better health and wellbeing opportunities within current design projects and is working towards gaining further knowledge on how this area of expertise can influence the built environment sector going forward. She co-authored Stride Treglown publication 'Health and Wellbeing designed-in'.

Marc Cooper is a Regeneration Project Manager at Bristol City Council with previous regeneration experience at Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames.

Maria Bryant is a Professor of Public Health Nutrition based at the University of York and the Bradford Institute of Health Research. She is a nutritionist with over 20 years’ experience in the design and delivery of trials and related methodological research in the field of food, diet and obesity. Her methodological interests include development and evaluation of public health interventions, food systems, food insecurity, early years and school food settings and applied health research. She is passionate about partnership working and is dedicated to ensuring meaningful engagement in all aspects of her work. In addition to being the strategic lead of a portfolio of research focused around public health nutrition within the Department of Health Sciences and the Hull York Medical School, Professor Bryant is the Director of Nutrition Research for Born in Bradford, theme lead for UKPRP ActEarly (Evaluation theme and Food and Healthy weight theme), sub-system lead for Early Years and Schools within UKRI Fix our Food, Academic Director of the BaBi network, the academic lead for Diet and Obesity evaluation for a Better Start Bradford, and the out-going Chair of the Board of Trustees for the UK Association for the Study of Obesity (ASO).

Maria is a PhD student in the Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Cambridge. Prior to starting her PhD Maria completed a MRes degree at the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Infrastructure and Built Environment at the University of Cambridge and conducted research exploring how to retrofit NHS facilities to cope with extreme weather events. Maria completed her undergraduate studies at the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, and also has previous experience working in project management roles for a construction and property consultancy and an environmental charity.

Mark is a researcher and practitioner with 20 years’ experience. He works across the fields of public health, urbanism, and architecture. His work addresses wider determinants of health, focused on promoting holistic wellbeing, and reducing health inequalities. Mark has recently completed his doctoral research, Healthy Streetlife, undertaken during the Covid-19 pandemic observing the impact of the street environment on health. This research has been based at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Urban Environments, UWE Bristol. As the founder and director of Urban Habitats Mark’s practice work encompasses population health across a spectrum of topics and methods. This includes working at a whole country scale with the WHO Collaborating Centre on Investment for Health and Wellbeing at Public Health Wales. He works at all urban scales including community co-design and addressing community agency as a determinant of health. With a background in practice and industry Mark has been involved in the delivery of over £2 billion of capital investment in social infrastructure. Mark has experience with a broad range of stakeholders across the urban health ecosystem from many different systems and sectors. Happiest whilst on a bicycle Mark is an optimistic gardener and lives in Cardiff, Wales with his family.

Mark is currently Professor of Health Geography (2024-Present), having previously been appointed as Lecturer in Health Geography (2015-2018), Senior Lecturer in Health Geography (2018-2022) and Reader in Health Geography (2022-2024) all within the Department of Geography & Planning at the University of Liverpool. During this time they were awarded the Alan Beeston Early Career Researcher of the Year in 2017. Prior to this, they were a Research Associate in Public Health at ScHARR (School of Health and Related Research), University of Sheffield (2013-2015). Mark completed their PhD in Geography at the University of Sheffield (2010-2013) under the supervision of Daniel Vickers and Danny Dorling.

Mark Sandford is a researcher specialising in local government, devolution, local government finance and territorial identity. He works as a senior research analyst in the House of Commons Library. He has published a number of reports, papers and journal articles on local government finance and English devolution. He has also been a research fellow at the Constitution Unit, University College London, and head of research at the Electoral Commission.

Martha has joined TRUUD as a PhD student in Management where she will be focussing on developing an intervention that attempts to make explicit and disrupt the power structures within the current system of urban development decision-making. She began her studies in psychology, at the University of Manchester, before spending 2 years studying Environmental Psychology in the Netherlands at the University of Groningen. In the Netherlands, her work focussed on intersectionality within pro-environment community groups and looked at using psychological theory to understand the demographic makeup of these groups.

Matthew Morgan is the Director and co-Founder of the Quality of Life Foundation. He is responsible for setting strategy with the Board of Trustees, overseeing the Foundation’s commercial services and delivering lasting impact with the Quality of Life team, itself focused on highlighting the impact of the built environment on people’s lived experience. With over 20 years’ experience in writing and communications, Matthew has previously worked with architects, engineers and developers; in book and magazine publishing; and with charities and start-ups. He is a participant on a number of advisory boards and chairs a multi-stakeholder group that advises on community engagement as part of the UKRI-funded CCQOL (Community Consultation for Quality of Life) project. A published author and mental health advocate, Matthew is particularly interested in how communities are formed and their effects on people’s physical, social and psychological wellbeing, an interest he developed while growing up in an intentional community in Kent.

Dr Melanie Lowe is a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University. Melanie investigates how to plan healthy and resilient cities and develops evidence-informed indicators to monitor and inform policy. She works at the interface of the urban planning and public health fields and collaborates with researchers and policymakers to strengthen consideration of health in city planning. Her research has been included in local, state and federal government policy in Australia. She is Co-Director of the Global Observatory of Healthy and Sustainable Cities, which develops and provides indicators of healthy and sustainable urban design and planning for cities across the globe.

Melinda Covey-Hansen is a seasoned Health Promotion Practitioner, bringing over 15 years of experience to the forefront of her work in shaping healthy and active communities.  Specialising in impactful policies, plans, and programs within local government, Melinda has been both a leader of and contributor to numerous healthy and active living, transport and recreation initiatives.  Melinda is currently completing a PhD with the University of Southern Queensland, focusing on active living, transport and recreation policy in local government.  Melinda is also a research assistant with the University of Southern Queensland, contributing to various system-mapping, citizen science, health-supportive environments and community-led research projects aimed at creating healthy and active communities.

Michael Rigby is the Data Partnerships Manager at Impact on Urban Health. Since October 2022, he has managed and created data partnerships to improve Impact on Urban Health's evidence and knowledge by utilising the latest data-driven approaches available. Michael has worked within the not-for-profit sector as a 'data for good' expert for over 20 years and was previously ‘Head of Digital’ at the Football Foundation – the UKs largest sports charity – where he was responsible for a successful digital transformation to enable the delivery of a ten year National Football Facilities Strategy.

Michael Wood is the Head of Health Economic Partnerships at the NHS Confederation. Prior to this he developed and held the role of NHS local growth adviser from 2015, for some of this time working as deputy local growth consultant for the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Before that, he was senior European policy manager at the NHS European Office for more than seven years. He has also worked for the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman and for a Member of the European Parliament in Brussels. As Head of Health Economic Partnerships, Michael advises NHS leaders nationally and locally on policy, strategy, partnerships and funding relating to the local economy, including in areas such as skills and workforce, estates, innovation, population health and finance. Michael currently holds national advisory positions on the Civic University Network and the National Civic Impact Accelerator, as well as the Midlands Engine Health Board. He also advises NHS London on the development of its NHS Anchor Network.

Dr Mikel Subiza-Perez obtained a PhD in Environmental Psychology in the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU (Spain) in 2019, where he works now as a postdoctoral researcher. He is also an honorary research fellow at the Bradford Institute for Health Research. He conducts research on environmental epidemiology and psychology, mostly aimed at understanding how urban environmental exposures shape behaviour and health. He is particularly intrigued about which factors, and through which processes, foster healthier and more sustainable lives and works with the vision of generating evidence to inspire public policies and interventions.

Milena Franco Silva is a research assistant in the People, Health, & Place Unit and a second-year PhD student in Public Health Sciences at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. Originally from Curitiba, Brazil, Milena is an architect and urbanist who earned her Master’s degree in Urban Management from the Pontifical Catholic University of Parana (PUCPR). Throughout her academic journey, Milena has recognized the intrinsic relationship between urban design and public health. With a commitment to fostering equitable and healthier communities, Milena aims to contribute actively to these efforts in urban settings across Latin America and globally, leveraging a transdisciplinary approach.

Mohammed has a wealth of knowledge across several sectors, including Healthcare, Residential, Education, Aviation and Masterplanning. His main focus at HLM is within the Healthcare sector, utilising his expertise to design and deliver superior clinical buildings, generate new business and to develop HLM’s Healthcare brand nationally and internationally. He is also responsible for developing HLM’s Elderly Care sector. Approaching the sector with a healthcare led design ethos combined with our expertise in residential placemaking to encourage ageing in place sooner and flexibility for occupants through the years.

Natalie Bamford is a research associate on the AHRC funded Design HOPES project at the University of Strathclyde. Her current research explores issues of communicating complicated information in relation to the home and health. Natalie's background is in the development and utilisation of creative or arts based methods, particularly working with concepts that traditionally defy representation.

Wood & Water is a not-profit narrative change consultancy, based in Southwark that focuses on environmental and international issues that are driven by colonial, extractive, and oppressive systems supported by narratives. The group prides itself on delivering pioneering engagement work to different community groups, charities, corporate groups and youth centres using the transformative power of narrative change to build unity and increase equity. As grant recipient, they worked at further developing a pilot programme that was delivered to a group of 15 young people at the Salmon Youth Centre in Southwark. The programme is designed to deliver educational, and narrative change workshops to 50 Black and Brown young people from ages 15 to 25.

Natasha Reid is founder of MATTER SPACE SOUL, a specialist design consultancy and creative lab shaping places for health, wellbeing and social sustainability. Having trained and practiced in architecture, she has focused on the social, psychological and emotional impacts of places over the last decade and often speaks at conferences on forward-thinking approaches to pressing urban issues. She is a “Healthy Places and Inclusive Design” expert for two London borough review panels, Fellow with the Center for Conscious Design and an Associate with the Quality of Life Foundation. She studied Architecture at Cambridge University and gained a Distinction for her Professional Diploma in Architecture at The Cass. She is an advocate for the power of design to create change that matters, recognised in international publications such as Wallpaper* and Elle Decoration, as a "Groundbreaker" and "Women to Watch".

Nazish is a research fellow based within the Co-Production and Peer Research network (CoPPeR) at Born in Bradford. Her role involves supporting community organisations as equal partners in the research process, including the training of local peer researchers. Prior to this role she worked with various projects focused on improving the health and well-being of people living with mental health and long-term illnesses. She holds a BA (Hons) in Politics and Sociology from the University of Leeds.

Neil joined HLM in March 1994, becoming a fully qualified architect in the November of 1995. Working almost exclusively on health projects since then, he was appointed Associate Director in July 2011 in recognition of 15 years in the healthcare sector. He has led on all types of specialism, from inception to completion, across Acute, Primary Care and Mental Health, most notably for the Queen’s Centre for Oncology and Haematology, Hull (RIBA 2009 White Rose Gold Award for Architecture). Passionate about the NHS and what it can achieve, a key driving factor in delivery of projects is the need to look at the bigger picture; reviewing every scheme holistically, focusing on the wider determinants of health, wellbeing and working environments, as well as the importance the impact the build environment has on healing in acute treatment care.

A behavioural scientist with a background in psychology researching transport safety and injury prevention through a public health lens. Her research encompasses the aetiology, epidemiology and impacts of unintentional injury and implications for policy and practice. Recently this has developed into an interest in how safety impacts sustainable and healthy mobility. Experienced in using exploratory, ethnographic techniques to understand complex social phenomena and human factors associated with the causes and consequences of injury and mixed methods approaches to evaluation including natural experiments, quasi-experimental and qualitative designs.

Founder and CEO of Feed Me Good. Nureen is a chef and Public Health Nutritionist, she founded the charity specialising in developing and delivering bespoke health and wellbeing Continuing Professional Development (CPD) accredited programmes for communities. The programmes promotes sustainability in the form of discouraging food waste, encouraging food budgeting and incorporating learning from nutrition studies to encourage a healthy diet. As a grant recipient, Feed Me Good expanded the reach of people engaging with these sessions through the development of a train-the-trainer model. Through building resources and content for social media, followers will be able to learn from people within their own communities that they identify with

With more than 15 years of freelancing experience in social enterprise - systemic innovation, community grassroots activism, environmentalism, and graphic/service design, I have had the opportunity to be an entrepreneur and co-found a successful for-profit fitness business with a community mission. I love connecting with my roots and culture, savouring nourishing food and gardening, enjoying music, alternative fitness - training, performing, and teaching (hula hooping, roller skating), and exploring my creativity. My entire career and lifestyle revolve around building community and empowering others. I am a passionate advocate for individuals with chronic illnesses, including #achalasia disease and other autoimmune conditions. I am proud to be an #movegb Ambassador, spreading the message of #moveforlife and promoting a positive mindset. I find joy in practicing mindfulness and learning from the wisdom of the Universe and our ancestors.

Olamide is a Portfolio Manager working in our Health effects of air pollution programme and Innovation function. She currently co-leads our work on Community wealth building, social investment for early stage diver-led suppliers and capacity-building for global majority-led businesses. She is also co-chair of the Foundation’s Climate Working Group.

Patrick’s career has been dedicated to the enhancement of green and blue infrastructure for twenty years. It is a career that began in the horticultural trade, working with scientists to produce award winning growing media to promote thriving plants and led to working closely with Staffordshire University to show plants reduce particulate matter (PM10) in our atmosphere and noise pollution. This peer reviewed research led to several green living walls and roofs being set up in Victoria, London, removing the threat of localised flash flooding (2010, disaster, closing the Underground trains). Cleaner air, a nicer and quieter Victoria environment and an award presented by Mayor of London Boris Johnson in 2012. Patrick’s specialist role as aquatic consultant has enabled him to positively influence many public realms and urban regeneration in the UK with a combination of inclusive water attractions. An epic day out for all. Helping with global studies on Heat Stress and developing sustainable solutions for increased climate comfort. Being smart and helping mother nature to give us all better health, and comfort in our living environments.

Paul is a partner at Ryder, established in Newcastle in 1953 with offices across the UK, Hong Kong, Vancouver and Amsterdam. Projects range in value from £50,000 to £300m, including civic, education, healthcare, infrastructure, leisure, manufacturing, office, residential, retail and science sectors. Paul completed his architectural education at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow in 1992 and with more than 20 years' experience in the healthcare sector, leads Ryder’s healthcare portfolio, which includes the award-winning Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary and the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow. In 2006, he established Ryder’s Glasgow team and led the early development of the Hong Kong team. Prior to joining Ryder, he worked with Terry Farrell for 11 years in London and Hong Kong and has spoken around the world on sustainable healthcare design.

Paula is an urban and regional planner and “pracademic” with 30 years’ senior executive experience in statutory and strategic planning in Queensland. She is currently the program director of the urban and regional planning program at the University of Southern Queensland. She is a Registered Planner and Fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) and a member of the editorial board the Australian Planner and the PIA National Education Committee. She has a strong attachment to and interest in the future of vibrant regional communities.

Rachael, a 4th generation family member, joined the business in 2013 and became Managing Director in 2022. With a scientific PhD and a number of business administration qualifications, Rachael is passionate about encouraging more diversity within engineering and construction. She is also a member of the Liverpool City Region Business and Enterprise Board, working with others to make the region the best place in the UK to live and work.

Rachel works in healthcare innovation leading regional projects in the North East of England. Originally qualified as a clinician with a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology Rachel has developed more than 15 years’ experience in project management and service improvement roles and more latterly completed a degree in urban planning and architecture. Her interests lie in the connections between wellbeing and urban design and how to support the creation of healthy, happy, fun places where people and communities can thrive. Rachel is co-creator of the programme, Healthy Happy Places, which is focusing specifically on how we can create positive mental health and wellbeing through the built environment by sharing expertise and knowledge between the NHS, public health, regeneration and planning, design, architecture, the arts and citizens; and using creative participation to nudge and inspire the design of places and spaces. Exploring ways of putting ‘tactical urbanism’ into action in places with deep inequalities using a set of evidence based 'ingredients' to guide possibilities in place. This is currently being tested and applied in practice to projects in the North East.

Raul D. Gierbolini-Rivera is a research assistant in the People, Health, & Place Unit and a third-year PhD student at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. He obtained his Masters of Public Health and Bachelors of Science in Athletic Training from the University of Southern Maine. He is a physical activity and built environment researcher from Puerto Rico who aims to develop evidence to build, sustain, and prosper the development of urban areas for all people to live and lead healthier lives.

Rebecca is a Research Fellow within the GroundsWell Consortium in the Department of Public Health, Policy & Systems. Her role in GroundsWell focuses on the development and evaluation of community-based urban green and blue space interventions, using co-design and qualitative approaches.

Rebecca is a lecturer in epidemiology and public health in the Department of Public Health, Policy, and Systems at the University of Liverpool. She is a rigorous and innovative mixed-methods researcher with international experience of conducting research on health inequalities. She has strong training in epidemiology, statistical modelling, natural experiments, mixed methods research, and study design. She has expertise in the analysis of longitudinal and linked administrative and survey data. Rebecca is a principal investigator on a Wellcome Trust Research Enrichment grant to support the Wellcome Trust funded birth cohort Children Growing up in Liverpool with a multi-year arts-based public engagement programme and is an investigator on the birth cohort itself. Rebecca is also a co-principal investigator on an Economic and Social Research Council grant on whether the two-child limit to welfare policy and cuts to contraceptive services in Britain has impacted abortion rates and household poverty. Her commitment to under- and post-graduate teaching has been recognised with the award of Fellow of the Higher Education Association (2018). Prior to joining the University of Liverpool, Rebecca was an Associate Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists where she led the development and evaluation of quality-of-care indicators and was a methodological advisor to the National Maternity and Perinatal Health Audit.

Rianna co-leads our work on trust in health systems and the role trust plays in creating health equity. As part of her work, she will collaborate with a range of stakeholders to understand the challenges and barriers Black and other minoritised communities experience when engaging with health systems. She intends to work with community members, academics, practitioners, and activists to devise solutions and initiatives with the hope of creating better health outcomes for Black communities in Lambeth and Southwark.

Rob is an architect and Head of Sustainability for Stride Treglown. Rob is passionate about placemaking, regenerative design, biodiversity and healthy cities. He is coordinating the practice's focus on zero carbon, nature abundant, people-centric, zero waste design. He was one of the founders and organisers of the Therapeutic City festival in Bath. The 7 day event explored how to make places good for the mind, body and soul and hosted a wider range of speakers as well as collaborating on closing main thoroughfares in the city to traffic during the festival. Rob was one of the architects behind the practice’s shortlisted ‘Re-imagining the Garden City’ entry, and been the winner of two RIBA competitions: ‘Tomorrow’s Garden City: A sustainable approach to living’ and ‘Imagine Bath’. He was architect for Great Bow Yard which was named ‘most energy efficient street in the UK’ when it was completed. He is behind several initiatives including 52 Big Ideas for Bristol, Waters of Bath, Bristol Colour Capital and more recently Sinking House, a climate art installation that received global media coverage, and a Funeral for Nature, a large-scale street procession highlighting biodiversity loss.

Roberto is the Data Manager for the GroundsWell Consortium, based at the University of Liverpool. His background is in computer science, data science and a bit of physics. He has been working in a variety of research environments for the last 10 years, mostly on high-performance computing research.

Robin Dawson has been involved in a wide variety of projects in the government, residential, commercial, cultural and hospitality sectors. Robin is highly skilled in architectural design and experienced in all phases of project delivery. She specializes in the design construction documentation process for complex projects in cost-conscious environments. Robin is process oriented and seeks to resolve problems through collaboration and engagement to ensure overarching goals and objectives can be obtained. Robin also performs a Project Manager role, collaboratively managing large teams of peers, consultants, stakeholders, and agencies for on-time delivery. Robin provides guidance and advice to develop feasibility assessments and direct Clients in better understanding the direction of the project. Robin has been working on projects within the Parliamentary Precinct for the past few years, specifically providing guidance on accessibility within the Precinct.

Rodrigo Reis is an investigator at the Prevention Research Center, and his research focuses on built and community environment and public health, with particular interest in community interventions for promoting physical activity, the effect of the built environment and active transportation on physical activity and health. At the Brown School, Reis teaches courses focusing on the built environment and public health, and is the chair of the Urban Design specialization in the Master of Public Health program. Prior to joining the Brown School, Reis was on the faculty at Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, as well as the Federal University of Parana in Curitiba, Brazil. He has played an important role in international projects, such as Project GUIA (Guide for Community in Latin America), the International Physical Activity and Environment Network, the Design to Move initiative, and Centers for Disease Control physical activity courses in Latin America. He has published extensively in leading peer-reviewed journals and is also part of The Lancet Physical Activity Series published in 2012 and 2016 and The Lancet Urban Design, Transport, and Health Series published in 2016. He serves on the board of the International Society of Physical Activity and Health.

Rosie McEachan is the Director of Born in Bradford and a proud (Scottish) Bradfordian. She is an experienced applied health researcher with particular interests in cohort studies, development and evaluation of complex interventions, environmental determinants of health, green space, air quality, and co-production. Rosie holds a visiting professor position at University College London and an honorary chair position at the University of Bradford.

Rumana Hossain is a Research Fellow at the School of Psychology, University of Leeds. Rumana’s background is in Language Teaching-Learning and Education. She has worked and published extensively on applied health and education research projects with the NHS and academia.

Dr Ruoyu Wang now is a Research Fellow in Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing, University of Essex. He used to be a Research Fellow in Centre for Public Health, Queen's University Belfast. He obtained a Ph.D in School of Geosciences from the University of Edinburgh in 2021. Ruoyu Wang mainly focuses on health geography research, pays special attention to the impact of urban built environment on various health indicators, and has in-depth research on the impact of urban green space on mental health.

Ruth's work primarily involves investigating how we can improve our urban environment for better population health and planetary health. She is particularly interested in research at the intersection of public health and planetary health. Her work involves the application of systems-thinking and complexity science methods, as well as social network analysis, causal inference and computer vision methods.

Team: The multidisciplinary team behind the HCG includes co-founder and award-winning urban health architect Marta Rofin Serrà, co-founder Sebastiaan van Herk, architects Ruth Gow and Celia García, researcher Amber De La Haye, and urban greening expert Sofia Aivalioti.

Sam is an air quality and odour technical expert. Sam uses his knowledge to deliver robust technical assessments of complex developments, whilst providing expert advice and guidance to the client on their design and mitigation strategies. Sam is experienced in monitoring, modelling and advising on mitigation and policy. He is a technical expert in air quality and odour impact assessments, dispersion modelling and emission calculations. Sam is experienced in undertaking technical work for local planning matters, Development Consent Orders, Environmental Permitting and research.

Sara is an Associate Director in Arup's Cities, Planning and Design team in Milan, and the Global Leader for Social Value and Equity. She also leads Arup's work on gender-responsive urban planning, and on child-friendly and playful cities. Sara believes in the power of collaborative partnerships and community engagement to achieve step-change outcomes in global issues. With more than two decades of experience as an urban planner, researcher, and international development expert, Sara has been at the forefront of designing and leading projects and programs focused on creating more equitable, inclusive, healthy and resilient cities. She also has the ability and passion to use applied research to shape innovative ideas and approaches, and transform them into strategies and practices that enable innovation and change. Some examples are the Proximity of Care Design Guide, the Playful Cities Toolkit, the Nature Based Play Report, and the Cities Alive Publication Designing Cities that work for Women. Sara holds a PhD in urban planning, with a thesis on the role of cultural heritage in place-making and sustainable development in East Africa. She is a member of the Cities4Children’s Steering Committee. Prior to Arup, Sara has worked with UN Agencies, Development Banks and NGOs across Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia.

Sarah is a Professor of Health Informatics with expertise in evaluating natural experiments and non-randomised intervention studies using anonymised linked administrative and health datasets. Sarah’s research focuses on using safe haven data that have been linked across health, social and environmental domains to explore the impact of exposures such as decent housing conditions, alcohol outlets, pollution, and natural outdoor spaces, on health and wellbeing. Sarah is Co-Director of a UK Prevention Research Partnership, GroundsWell. This Consortium aims to reduce health inequities of non-communicable diseases through the provision of appropriate urban green and blue spaces. GroundsWell work across the Liverpool, Belfast, and Edinburgh city regions. Sarah is an investigator on the Wellcome Trust funded birth cohort Children Growing Up in Liverpool and Civic Data Cooperative data linkage initiative. She is one of the academic leads for the Liverpool and Lancaster School for Public Health Research LiLaC. Sarah is the capacity training lead for LiLaC SPHR, and for our Department of Public Health, Policy & Systems. She leads the Care and Health Informatics theme for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (Northwest Coast). Sarah is making contributions to the new NW Secure Data Initiative to enable evaluations to include data across different siloes using a 'bring your own data' approach.

Shahid is Senior Research Fellow in the ActEarly Collaboratory, Born in Bradford and lead for the Co-Production and Peer Research network (CoPPeR) with a special interest in citizen science and co-production. Previously he has held several posts in both the voluntary and statutory sector to drive forward the engagement and involvement agenda. In 2015 Shahid was the winner of Bradford’s Community Star Award for outstanding services to the voluntary sector and in 2021 he won the Chief Scientific Officer's Excellence in Healthcare Science Research and Innovation Award. He has led on the ‘co-production’ of the ‘co-production strategy’ which has been implemented across the health sector and he describes his role as community activism through applied research.

Sharon is an entrepreneur with an eclectic range of experiences spanning various industry sectors from radio broadcasting, marketing health promotional campaigns to licensing copyrighted music internationally and property portfolio management. She was recently appointed a board of Trustee to mental health charity Mosaic ClubHouse in Brixton and sits as a member of the organisers of the BRIT Awards / BPI Equity & Justice Advisory Group. Sharon Chaired, Black Thrives Lambeth’s - participatory grant making ‘Employment Working Group’. The representatives were composed of leaders of grassroots organisations, individuals with lived experiences, public health managers and community researchers who together co-designed the grant decision making process which led to the successful distribution of £300K to independent individual ideas, project initiatives and charities that supported black people with long-term health conditions and disabilities into employment.

Shaun is a senior urban planner and Director of UK Planning at Prior + Partners. He draws on his extensive experience in both the private and public sectors, with Shaun’s expertise spanning the delivery of complex regeneration projects including new communities, formulating strategic planning documents, and crafting masterplans that shape the future of neighbourhoods and urban centres. Shaun is passionate about championing built environment principles and practices that prioritise the creation of healthy communities and places. He is a co-author of ‘The Healthy City’ on behalf of Key Cities, which seeks to embrace the full potential of our urban landscapes to ‘create health’. A Planning Expert to the Government’s High Streets Task Force, Shaun is also collaborating with the Quality of Life Foundation to advise the Local Government Association on a holistic resource for councils to understand and leverage their powers in promoting public health through planning.

Dr Shay Mullineaux's research focuses on interactions between the living and physical components of the environment, developing experimental and statistical approaches to elucidate the mechanisms underlying ecotoxicological and environmental change phenomena, and potential applications for environmental management and public health.

Prof. Sonja Kahlmeier’s work focuses on physical activity, active transport and health, with policies and strategies, transport-related and economic approaches. She has ample experience in systematic approaches to policy analysis and evaluation of policy, which were the topics of both her PhD and her habilitation. She has been coordinating the development of WHO tools, including a Policy Audit Tool for national approaches to physical activity promotion and the Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEAT) for walking and cycling and an evidence-based system for benchmarking policy approaches of cities towards cycling and walking. She holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from ETH Zurich, a doctorate in epidemiology, a habilitation in public health and a professorship in health promotion with a focus on active transport approaches.

Sonja is Professor in Architecture and Sustainability Design Innovation with over 20 years innovation and research experience in the sustainability and design sector. She has worked as an associate architect, senior manager and principal investigator in delivery of complex multidisciplinary research, innovation and design projects ranging in value from £200k-£29mil in the UK and internationally. She founded the Radical Architecture Practice for Sustainability network (http://www.rapsresearch.com) in partnership with leading design practitioners and researchers in Sweden, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Serbia and France. She has been appointed as a Thought Leadership Specialist Advisor to the Design Council and is a board member of the World Green Building Council (Serbia), as well as scientific and industry advisory member of numerous scientific committees including ARENA and the New European Bauhaus Collective. Her research, design and teaching practice are fostered through building strong industry and academic links across disciplines within the built environment as well as in computer science, psychology, environmental science and sociology. Her recent work carried out for accelerating socially responsible design capability and capacity for housing delivery has been selected for the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee’s report, Off-site manufacture for construction: Building for change and presented as invited keynote at the Westminster Social Forum in Dec 2020. Sonja has worked with UK and EU government institutions, EU business consultancy, international design firms, UK innovation hubs, research institutions and recently housing associations to examine complex cross-disciplinary problems that emerge in the designed environment. Trained in architecture and construction management and engineering, Sonja takes a novel approach to developing new insights into complex climate change phenomena in the designed environment.

Sophia Schuff is a passionate advocate for designing cities that prioritize the well-being of both people and the planet. As a Director at Gehl, an urban design practice on a mission to create more equitable, healthy, and sustainable cities, she leads Gehl’s portfolio serving the Philanthropy sector. In this role, she advocates for improving communities’ social, health and wellbeing outcomes through urban transformation. Sophia’s commitment to enhancing the urban experience stems from her background as an anthropologist and deep understanding of the human experience within the built environment. She speaks across various topics including urban design for early childhood development, food systems, regenerative placemaking, and equity in public space. She participated in the UN Global Compact Young SDG Innovators program, and is serving as an expert advisor to the World Early Childhood Development Movement.

Sophie specialises in the development and evaluation of behaviour change interventions aimed at preventing and treating chronic conditions and addressing health inequalities. Her work incorporates mixed methods research, blending evidence-based behaviour change methodologies across healthcare settings, public health projects, and industry collaborations. With a robust academic foundation in psychology and neuropsychology, Dr. Turnbull completed her PhD on the impact of digital health interventions on health inequalities in chronic conditions.

Steve has worked in the public health field for 23 years following an early career in Biomedical Science. His work has spanned the NHS, Universities, Private Sector, Local Government, Regional and National Government, and through volunteering gained extensive international experience. He is currently the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) North West Lead for Health Inequalities, Healthy Place and Levelling Up. His work has included the Children of the Nineties Project, Drug and alcohol harm reduction, Children and young people’s health, Healthy weight, tobacco control, health inequalities, Incident response, and Housing, planning, environment and health. Steve often develops pioneering initiatives developing new operating approaches such as a Whole Systems Approach, adopting Healthy high streets, and maximising licensing and planning laws to address health concerns. He has been a member of many government and third sector steering groups covering commissioning, treatment, planning, licensing, organisational and cultural and best practice.

Dr Mebrahtu is a statistical epidemiologist (PhD) with medical background. His areas of expertise and research interest are evidence synthesis (systematic review and meta-analysis), electronic health records management and longitudinal data analyses.

Dr Tiffany Yang is a Principal Research Fellow with the Born in Bradford (BiB) family of projects at the Bradford Institute for Health Research. She gained her PhD from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and is interested in the health impacts of environmental exposures including air pollution, green space, and chemical exposures, the evaluation of public health interventions, and increasing collaborations to enhance the use and impact of cohort data.

Founder and Creative Director of Applied, Tim Fendley is a designer with over 30 years experience creating innovative wayfinding systems for some of the world’s most important cities, campuses and cultural institutions. Tim has extensive experience in innovation, communication, wayfinding and digital design alongside a passion to simplify people’s lives. Seeking to understand how design can change behaviour for the better, Tim is devoted to helping people discover more, be braver and feel less lost. Tim’s company Applied creates projects which push the boundaries of information design and make our cities and communities more understandable. For example, Legible London was created to make London the most walking-friendly city. The unified walking system has a higher proven impact than any other and has become the international standard for citywide wayfinding. Tim is a tireless speaker and campaigner for the development of accessible wayfinding systems for public places. He has spoken on the subject at the London School of Economics, Reading University, Sign Design Society and the International Institute for Information Design in Vienna. Tim is also an advisor to the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art, and an editorial board member of IIID.

Tim Minshall is a software engineer at Repowering London, a not-for-profit community energy development organisation. He led on data analysis and visualisation, as well as smart meter data collection automation for the Home Monitoring for Wellbeing (HMW), a pilot study exploring practical, community-based approaches to facilitating low-income households to improve their indoor air quality and wellbeing at home. Tim builds digital tools to manage and leverage data for the efficient operation of energy and innovation projects. He has a background in renewable energy engineering and climate science, having worked as a wind resource analyst designing offshore wind farms. He now works as a data scientist and software engineer. With experience in both startups and corporate environments, Tim is passionate about using technology to support social innovation, rather than trusting market-driven technological solutions.

Professor Tracy Kolbe-Alexander has substantial experience in community-based participatory research methods and citizen science programs that aim to address health and equity outcomes. Her main research focus explores the role of the social, built and natural environment in supporting wellbeing in communities, including those with low socio-economic status, regional and remote areas, and the Global South. Using various strategies and methodologies, including participatory community-based and systems science approaches, she has developed, implemented and evaluated health promotion programs in different settings. Her research has been translated into policy and practice.

Uchita Vaid is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Design Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is an environmental psychologist and a design educator. She received her PhD in Human Behavior and Design from Cornell University and also did a post-doc there in the department of Design and Environmental Analysis. Her scholarship seeks to understand the role of built environments and design in improving the human condition. In her work she investigates complex interactions between design, human behavior, and health, with a goal to create healthy, supportive, and equitable environments for living, working, and playing. Her work shows that human health and well-being are inextricably linked with our physical as well as socio-cultural environmental factors. She is interested in understanding these connections to enable the use of evidenced-based design principles within our built environments, especially in environments of crisis. Her work underscores how design can be used as a transformational force to address health and social vulnerabilities, particularly in global low-to-middle income contexts.

Originally an academic at UCL, Vanessa later edited a London newspaper and founded a media company and consultancy with clients like the BBC and NHS. Inspired by witnessing the biophilic healing effect of nature views in hospitals, she founded The Journal of Biophilic Design to explore biophilia's impact on wellbeing. A professional photographer and filmmaker, she creates “Virtual Nature Walls” for various settings and founded the philanthropic PhotoAid Global Foundation and co-founded The Space Doctors to promote science-based environmental improvements.

Wenjing(Wendee) is an urban geographer, her research interests mainly including environmental sustainability, urban planning and studies on smart/future cities. Wendee finished her PhD in Geography from University of Melbourne, the thesis examined the sustainability transitions of urban planning in a future city, its implications on environmental policies on urban water management, and the usage of hydraulic missions to realise water sustainability. Her research findings had been published on Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, Land Use policy, Journal of environmental management etc. She joined the University of Liverpool, department of Geography and urban planning since August 2022. Wenjing's research mainly involve apply mixed qualitative and qualitative methods on human-environment relationship (i.e. Environmental governance, sustainable management of land and water resources, health and wellbeing) to inform policy making and urban planning. Her current research examines how urban green space and blue areas can affect resident's wellbeing in UK and globally.

Will recently completed a master's study into suburban high-street revitalisation and its policy implications. He now works in a Newcastle based practice across healthcare, residential and older living accommodation sectors.

Yijing Li is Senior Lecturer in Urban Informatics and Deputy Director for Centre for Urban Studies and Progress (CUSP) London at King's College London. She is excel at applying geospatial data mining, fusion, analysis and visualisation techniques onto varied urban topics, such as safety and crime, health and transport, environment and sustainability. The team's working closely with partners from public sectors and charities in London and nationwide, to produce data-driven evidence in the aim to support policy making.

Yurong Yu is a PhD candidate at Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London. Her research interests include biodiversity conservation policy, climate policy and environmental risk assessment. Her PhD, titled "Improving Evidence-Based Decision-Making around Transportation Infrastructure impacts on Biodiversity: Cultural Perspectives, Stakeholder Values, and Biases", delves deep into the intricate trade-offs in decision-making around biodiversity conservation and transportation infrastructure development.

Adriana is a researcher at the Centre for Transport Studies at UCL with over 10 years of experience investigating sustainable mobility and wellbeing and health in cities. Upon joining UCL, she participated in a large-scale interdisciplinary program defining visions for future liveable cities. Adriana has professional expertise in the planning and assessment of policies for active mobility, low-carbon transport and healthy places in Latin America and the Caribbean. She has collaborated closely with planning authorities and communities in the UK and internationally to build capacity and empower citizens with tools for transformative action. Her current research employs quantitative and qualitative methods to understand how the built environment of streets and neighbourhoods impacts children's health, subjective wellbeing, and travel behaviour. Her research also focuses on assessing policies such as the health impact assessment of new developments and understanding the broader benefits of healthy places interventions, such as fostering inclusive, sustainable cities and communities and achieving decarbonization goals.

Aidan Watmuff is a data analyst for the Born in Bradford (BiB) longitudinal cohort study. After completing a BA in Human Geography and an MSc in Geographic Data Science at the University of Liverpool, he took the opportunity to contribute towards health research in his home city of Bradford and joined the BiB team in 2021. At BiB he has drawn from the theoretical and practical experience his degrees provided and has been involved in a range of both research and technical projects. His primary focus has been improving and expanding the geographic data available at the study. This has led to the development of comprehensive environmental exposure data and facilitated novel research into the relationships between micro environments and health in the city. He has a keen interest in health inequalities and enjoys combining applied research and data science to ensure complex data can be used effectively by all to facilitate health research at BiB.

Dr Russo is a Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), whose research centres on the critical intersection of urban green infrastructure, ecosystem services, human health, climate change, and urban agriculture. Prior to joining QUT, Dr Russo held senior academic positions at the University of Gloucestershire, UK (Senior Lecturer, 2019-2024), RUDN University in Moscow, Russia (Associate Professor, 2018-2019), and FEFU, Vladivostok (Professor and Head of Laboratory of Urban and Landscape Design, 2016-2018). He has led research projects and research units, focusing on mitigating urban heat islands, fostering climate adaptation for sustainable cities, and exploring the potential of urban agriculture. He currently serves on editorial boards in well-known peer-reviewed journals such as Urban Planning (Cogitation Press), Discovering Cities (Springer Nature), and AIMS Urban Resistance and Sustainability (AIMS Press). He further contributes to the field as associate editor for Urban Agriculture and Regional Food Systems (Wiley).

Anna Viola Epping is a researcher Healthy Cities at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen in the Netherlands and member of Research Centre NoorderRuimte. She is an architect and is passionate about how public spaces can encourage certain behaviours. The interaction between people and the environment interests her immensely. She is concerned with design research, creative participation methods, design power and lively cities. The focus of Healthy Cities is on stimulating a healthy lifestyle and improving health by means of intervening in the built environment, with the aim of diminishing health inequalities. This is done in close cooperation with all stakeholders, and especially with the inhabitants.

Anthony is a Lecturer of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Southern Queensland, and former senior data scientist within the Australian Bureau of Statistics and transportation web application developer with the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN). Sustainable and socially-equitable regional and metropolitan development is his mission and his research expertise includes capitalising on big and open data to both: examine the efficacy and outcomes of land use and transport policy standards; and to develop PlanTech that supports effective decision making and prioritisation of our most disadvantaged neighbourhood communities.

Archontia is a chartered Architect and Design Researcher specialising in workplace design, applied research and digital tool development, with a focus on applications of psychology for real and simulated environments. Bridging the gap between research and practice through evidence-based design, Archontia has been involved with projects across various sectors, including Workplace, Education, Civic, Heritage and Aviation, both as a designer and as part of a research team. Recent projects include the design and construction of commercial and public sector offices, and the development of a toolkit for engaging Mainstream and SEND school students into the POE process. Archontia’ s commitment to designing spaces that prioritise human experience led her to explore human-environment relationships through fundamental research during her masters studies in Psychology, and Architecture where she specialised in environmental psychology and computational urban design. Her research focussed on spatial preferences in relation to personality, personal space as a function of contextual and interpersonal influences, neurodiversity requirements for post-pandemic offices, and design strategies that utilise digital tools and virtual simulation to assess effects of green spaces on environmental factors and human comfort.

Bill has provided the creative impetus for the practice’s distinctive, inter-disciplinary, community focused approach, which is responsive to people, respectful of the environment and proactive in achieving transformational change. He has led many masterplans, most recently at Seacombe, developing a neighbourhood framework for the new ‘Left Bank’ of the Mersey. Part of this commission has been to work with Bax & Co, Barcelona with an innovative ‘Healthy Cities’ modelling tool to appraise design iterations from a health perspective. Bill continues his work with communities and is currently working with Rotunda, on a community education project in Liverpool, in the first place to remodel their existing building, a Grade II Listed Georgian terrace, and now to develop a radical live-learn residential project. The project is co-housing and inter-generational to provide a supported environment for young families and older people. Bill’s involvement and commitment continues to find expression through the design of convivial, safe, and stimulating living and working environments which are conducive to communal life and create distinctive neighbourhoods with strong local identity and sense of ownership. Through his work, he continues to develop the principles of socially and environmentally sustainable design, and the spirit of innovation in the design process.

Dr Brian Kelly is a senior research fellow at the Born in Bradford birth cohort study. He has a background in applied quantitative research, with around twenty-five years of experience working for a number of local authorities and charity organisations prior to obtaining his PhD in Social Statistics from the University of Manchester. After obtaining his doctorate he joined the Born in Bradford team in 2014, initially with a focus on utilising routine primary care data. Over the years he has been involved in a range of projects at Born in Bradford, with a focus on health inequalities. He has a keen interest in public health and social justice, and also in applied research that aims to improve the wellbeing of individuals and communities.

Christopher Ali-Hempstead has a BA in Town Planning and over 20 years’ experience of working for several local planning authorities within London, specialising in planning applications and planning enforcement. He joined Tower Hamlets 5 years ago as a Planning Enforcement officer. He has been with Development Coordination since March 2021 working on projects including: the Health Impact Assessment (HIA) for Marsh Wall, documenting a green hoarding pilot case study, identifying land for a range of vehicle parking or material storage uses, defining a communication strategy and developing the council’s first Construction Awards programme.

As Vice President of Design at NORR, David brings over 35 years of experience working across multiple sectors, providing strategic direction and design leadership. He champions the design conversation within the firm, leading the internal NORR Design Forum and actively mentors the firm’s next generation of designers. David was the NORR design leader for the Ontario Court of Justice, Toronto as well other government institutions including the Wellington and the Sir John A. MacDonald Buildings, Waterloo Region Courthouse, Elgin County Courthouse, Renfrew County Courthouse, the redevelopment of Toronto’s Union Station and the update of the Long-Term Vision Plan for Canada’s Parliamentary Campus. He is the founding chair of the Canadian Academy of Architecture for Justice, Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, member of the Metrolinx Design Review Panel and Chair of the City of Hamilton Design Review Panel.

Shira is an urban development planner and social anthropologist focusing on delivering place-based spatial and social sustainability. As part of Ramboll’s Regenerative Cities Team, she leads on urban wellbeing strategies for liveable and resilient urban environments that sustain both human and planetary health. She develops and supports the implementation of strategies based on integrated and vulnerability-sensitive development, design for behaviour change, and local social value approaches. Shira holds a doctorate from the Future of Cities programme at the University of Oxford. She sits on the Advisory Board for the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Urban Wellbeing and delivers an annual talk for the University College London’s MSc Health in Urban Development and the University of Cambridge’s Future of Roads Programme.

Faye is a MRC TMRP PhD student combining areas of clinical trials methodology, pharmacogenetics and statistics. Her project is studying how big data can be utilised to emulate biomarker-guided trials.

Recognised as a Woman of Influence in Planning 2024, Hannah is a leader in her field and promotes high-quality development and regeneration through her comprehensive and inspiring design process. As an “ideas person” and with the desire to think outside of the box, Hannah uses her creative skills to think strategically and bring added value and energy to her work. She believes in creating narrative at every stage and engaging a design process that is interdisciplinary, follows a landscape-led approach and achieves imaginative placemaking. Hannah recently featured in the BBC 2 documentary “The Newbuilds are Coming”, which followed a housing development through the Planning System; observing the extensive design process and detailed consideration that takes place behind the scenes of the development industry. During her career, Hannah has been involved in, and led, the design of many projects including Masterplans and Visions for NW Bicester Eco Town, Oak Old Common, Earls Court, Royal Albert Docks, Mount Pleasant and Wood Wharf. She has successfully designed and delivered mixed-use masterplans of between 1 and 20,000 units in the South East, predominantly Oxfordshire. Hannah is passionate about site finding, urban regeneration and creating vibrant high streets for our towns and cities. The submission is from a team of creatives - including Niamh Brady, edge Urban Design, You See Media, Richard Laming, Jeff Nottage both from Turley, Liane Hartley from Considerate Urbanism & Mend and Natasha Reid of Matter.Space.Soul

Harry is an RTPI-accredited built environment professional, with experience in town planning, development project management, and politically high-pressured national programme implementation across both the public and private sectors. He is an Associate Director at Archus with a deep interest and knowledge in Primary Care, specialising in the interface between healthcare planning and development.

Iman is an Architectural Designer and Design Researcher based in the AtkinsRéalis Cardiff Studio. Her interest in applied research and understanding end-user needs led her to complete a year-long secondment as part of the Building Design Research and Innovation team. Working as a Design Researcher, Iman was involved with projects across several sectors including education and workplace. Her research focused on analysing and interpreting Mainstream and SEND student requirements as part of briefing and POE processes and developing evidence-based guidance to support design decision-making. Iman’s work as an Architectural Designer primarily focuses on education facilities. Her most recent project involves an ALN school, which introduces a layer of complexity around delivering inclusive and engaging design that accommodates the diverse needs of students. Iman believes that understanding end-user requirements, and using evidence-based design as part of decision-making processes can create a substantial impact in delivering positive value to clients and end-users.

James is a Portfolio Manager at Impact on Urban Health, an independent urban health foundation committed to building health equity and making cities healthier places for everyone to live. An On Purpose Associate, he previously spent 10 years in the private sector building a sports agency and has spent time living in the Caribbean, London and Melbourne. He led on the development and implementation of Impact on Urban Health’s climate strategy and has mobilised funding and resource at the intersection of health, racial equity, and climate justice. He currently sits in the innovation team where his work focuses on the future of urban health, with a specific focus on community-led asset ownership as a mechanism for building wealth in underserved communities.

Jeannette Nijkamp is full professor Healthy Cities at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen in the Netherlands and member of Research Centre for Built Environment NoorderRuimte. She is an urban sociologist. Her research group focusses on stimulating a healthy lifestyle and improving health by means of intervening in the built environment, with the aim of diminishing health inequities and contributing to resilient communities. This is done in close cooperation with all stakeholders, and especially with the inhabitants. Her research interests include the co-creation of attractive and inclusive public spaces, innovative housing concepts, citizens’ initiatives and public-private collaboration.

I have a professional background in practice and administration in architecture, planning, housing, and regeneration. My experience spans public, private and community sectors and follows a degree in architecture and a master’s in urban regeneration. At the Heseltine Institute I am involved in research and consultancy including an evaluation of Liverpool City Region Combined Authority's Households into Work programme and the Health Foundation project Economies for Healthier Lives. In previous roles, I have been responsible for the management and monitoring of place-based funding programmes in Liverpool City Region and elsewhere, including New Deal for Communities, Single Regeneration Budget, European Regional Development Fund and Area Based Grant.

John made his international reputation with innovative work in relation to teenage pregnancy and the response to the threat of HIV/AIDS when mass youth unemployment led to heroin addiction. His public defence of Liverpool supporters following the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989 brought him to prominence. As a result of his work, John was invited by the WHO to become the first co-ordinator of its proposed European Healthy Cities Project which has since become a global movement. The WHO Healthy Cities Project was established in 1986, initially with 11 cities, including Liverpool. The Project, which was based on the success of the Victorian ‘Health of Towns Movement’, was intended to ‘take the WHO Strategy of Health For All off the shelves and onto the streets of Europe. John’s book ‘The New Public Health’, published 1989, with Howard Seymour, became a standard text for public health students and John was awarded the C.B.E. in 2000 for his contribution to the NHS Elected President of the Faculty of Public Health of the UK Royal Colleges of Physicians in 2013, most recently John was a member of the Bahrain Covid-19 Task Force and awarded the Crown Prince of Bahrain medal for medical excellence.

John has worked in both the public and voluntary sector and his most recent roles have been leading employment programmes for Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. He currently leads on the Liverpool City Region’s Economies for Healthier Lives programme (one of five partnerships in the UK funded by the Health Foundation) to improve access to employment opportunities for unemployed residents who have a health condition and who are seeking employment and to help residents with a health condition to remain in employment. Prior to this John managed the devolved Households into Work programme in Liverpool City Region, which was the proudest time of his working life, as he “finally got to put his ideas for helping people into work into practice and on a much larger scale than he had ever expected”.

Jon began his career as a graduate architect collaborating with Dr. Rob MacDonald to co-author the book Morphocity. He continued his journey as a designer in brand communications, animation, film and the emerging digital media industry. In 2006, he co-founded and ran the award-winning design agency The Neighbourhood, with a particular specialism in place branding and activation. As Creative Director he worked with an array of pioneering clients across the property and hospitality sectors such as Allied London, Urban Splash, The Corinthia Hotel and the Michelin starred chef Heston Blumenthal. Jon joined interior design company Sheila Bird Studio in 2019 as co-owner and creative partner producing innovative award-winning schemes across workplace, residential and hospitality sectors. Together with business partner Atul Bansal, he helped develop a semi-abandoned concert hall in Manchester into a thriving education, hospitality and entertainment venue called New Century.

Dr Kimon Krenz is a Senior Research Associate at the Bartlett School of Architecture and a member of the Space Syntax Laboratory at University College London (UCL), United Kingdom. He earned his PhD in Urban Space and Computation from UCL. His research utilises computational methods to quantify and analyse the built environment, focusing on how space influences human behaviour. He is particularly interested in using spatial data science to uncover social, economic, health, and spatial inequalities, applying this knowledge to inform evidence-based urban planning and policy-making. In addition to his academic work, Dr Krenz has experience as an architect, urban planner, and consultant for medium to large-scale urban development projects in Germany, which have received several architecture awards. @KimonKrenz

UPDATED 29/5/24: Laura Vaughan is Director of the Space Syntax Lab, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. She has extensive experience of research into the relationship between urban form and society using space syntax methods to consider some of the most critical aspects of cities and society, ranging from spatial inequalities and health, poverty and housing, to economic and social vitality. Her research has established theoretically that spatial form needs to be understood as a contributing factor in the creation of patterns of integration and segregation in cities. It has also established methodologically that there is a need to develop descriptively rich methods for analysing historic socio-economic changes to cities - including both spatial as well as political processes. In addition to extensive research and teaching activities, Professor Vaughan is regularly invited to disseminate knowledge to policy-makers. She is a member of the West Yorkshire Scientific Advisory Group and Chair of the International Space Syntax Executive Committee. Professor Vaughan was elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 2005 and subsequently elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2015. Most recently she gave evidence to the House of Lords Built Environment Committee on the future of high streets. OLD: Laura Vaughan is Professor of Urban Form and Society and the Director of the Space Syntax Laboratory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. She completed a Bachelor of Design at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem in 1989. From 1988 onwards she worked at Shlomo Aronson Landscape Architects and then for Yoram Fogel Architects, both in Jerusalem, Israel. She also worked as an illustrator for the David Kroyanker series of books on the architecture of Jerusalem. Laura returned to London in 1992 to take an MSc in Advanced Architectural Studies at the Bartlett, UCL. She subsequently studied for an EPSRC funded PhD in Architecture (completed 1999) while working as a Research Associate and Company Secretary at Space Syntax Ltd. Laura joined the Space Syntax Lab in 2001 as a lecturer and MSc programme director. She was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2007 and to Professor in 2011. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 2005. She was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2015. In addition to her extensive research and teaching activities, Laura is regularly invited to disseminate knowledge to industry, policy-makers and the general public.

As Head of Engagement & Behaviour Change at MP Smarter Travel, I specialise in conducting targeted engagement to influence travel behaviour change and promote active travel promotion to workplaces, schools and residents. I have a passion for ensuring equality, diversity and inclusion within infrastructure design and active. One of the projects that I’ve worked on is our Places of Worship, Smart Trips project which provides meaningful active travel engagement with under-represented groups to reduce barriers to sustainable travel. The Lambeth Accessibility builds on this, using lived experience from disabled members of the community to shape accessible public realm design.

Liane is a “Considerate Urbanist” and is an urban planner by background and social entrepreneur in practice. She has been a consultant and writer on the broad area of urban sustainability for over twenty years. Her focus is on the social future of cities and how we live in and experience urban space. She writes about the emergence of the social city and “Considerate Urbanism” - moving us from car-based to care-based urbanism. Considerate urbanism is a movement, mindset and method for more considerate urban experiences futures, and behaviours to emerge for people planet. Liane specialises in building positive social outcomes from the built environment through the businesses and organisations she has created (Mend and Considerate Urbanism) and the women’s leadership organisation she has founded (Urbanistas). She combines her personal interest in the social dynamics of cities and the future of cities, with her professional skills in strategy, policy, collaboration, and project delivery. Liane has a strong academic and professional background in the social impact of the built environment, and is regularly asked to speak, chair, write and participate, and to mentor others.

Lisa is a Senior Research Fellow / Embedded Researcher working at the Bradford Institute of Health Research (BIHR) and the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council (CBMDC). Her work aims to support the use of research and evaluation in local government decision-making. Lisa particularly focuses on supporting ‘real-time’ research and evaluation of place-based interventions to understand the impact on health and wellbeing.

Lisa has almost two decades of research experience, achieved primarily through externally funded projects utilising systematic review and other methods of evidence synthesis. She is a research leader and has been involved in the production and delivery of more than 30 evidence syntheses on health and public health related topics. Lisa has led the production of evidence synthesis projects to support the development of guidance and guidelines by national and international bodies; including the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the UK Chief Medical Officers and the World Health Organization. In recent years, she has been a work-package lead on two NIHR-funded evidence synthesis projects (RECO study NIHR128128 and AMOUNT study NIHR202988). Since January 2024, she has had a major role as a co-applicant in the successful bid by Liverpool City Council for a Health Determinants Research Collaboration (HDRC) (NIHR159187). Within the HDRC Liverpool, she is contributing academic input to units providing research capacity and culture building within local government and decision support for evidence informed decision making.

Luke Engleback CMLI FRSA Chartered Landscape Architect, Ecourbanist Luke has four decades experience as a designer at all scales, establishing Studio Engleback in 1998. He has taught since 1984 and regularly presents papers or posters on Ecourbanism & biodiversity, climate change adaptation & health, and has taught this to architects / landscape architects in the UK and abroad. A board member and former chair of the Landscape Foundation, Luke also sits on the Landscape Institute Policy and Communications Committee (since 2015) and has been involved in workshops and teaching soils, regenerative design, design for climate change, biophilic design, urban agriculture etc. Formerly a CABE Space Enabler, Luke has been a peer reviewer on a number of panels including Design South East (2010-2023), Midlands Design Panel, the Cambridge Quality Panel and the South Downs National Park (formerly Vice Chair) and theFolkestone & Hythe Place panel. He is also a peer reviewer on the Cities & Health Journal, and on various Awards juries. The work in Studio Engleback is varied and at all scales from Sub-regional planning frameworks/urban frameworks, Landscape character & sensitivity assessments and LVIA, masterplanning, housing, exception houses, and detailed hard and soft design. Ecourbanism is a regenerative systems approach to urban/periurban design. Studio Engleback is a founder signatory of UK Landscape Architects Declare a Climate & Biodiversity Emergency.

Mark studied landscape architecture at the University of Sheffield and also has an undergraduate degree in Illustration. He has worked on community regeneration schemes and across a broad spectrum of sectors, which include masterplanning, urban design, green infrastructure, public realm, open spaces, parks, and large-scale commercial projects. Mark’s passion lies in the creation of sustainable landscapes.

Mark is a researcher and practitioner with 20 years’ experience. He works across the fields of public health, urbanism, and architecture. His work addresses wider determinants of health, focused on promoting holistic wellbeing, and reducing health inequalities. Mark has recently completed his doctoral research, Healthy Streetlife, undertaken during the Covid-19 pandemic observing the impact of the street environment on health. This research has been based at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Urban Environments, UWE Bristol. As the founder and director of Urban Habitats Mark’s practice work encompasses population health across a spectrum of topics and methods. This includes working at a whole country scale with the WHO Collaborating Centre on Investment for Health and Wellbeing at Public Health Wales. He works at all urban scales including community co-design and addressing community agency as a determinant of health. With a background in practice and industry Mark has been involved in the delivery of over £2 billion of capital investment in social infrastructure. Mark has experience with a broad range of stakeholders across the urban health ecosystem from many different systems and sectors. Happiest whilst on a bicycle Mark is an optimistic gardener and lives in Cardiff, Wales with his family.

Matthew Morgan is the Director and co-Founder of the Quality of Life Foundation. He is responsible for setting strategy with the Board of Trustees, overseeing the Foundation’s commercial services and delivering lasting impact with the Quality of Life team, itself focused on highlighting the impact of the built environment on people’s lived experience. With over 20 years’ experience in writing and communications, Matthew has previously worked with architects, engineers and developers; in book and magazine publishing; and with charities and start-ups. He is a participant on a number of advisory boards and chairs a multi-stakeholder group that advises on community engagement as part of the UKRI-funded CCQOL (Community Consultation for Quality of Life) project. A published author and mental health advocate, Matthew is particularly interested in how communities are formed and their effects on people’s physical, social and psychological wellbeing, an interest he developed while growing up in an intentional community in Kent.

Maya Ljubojevic is a Public Health and Health Policy PhD student. The research revolves around Thriving Cities- public mental health initiatives. Maya’s background consists of geography, economics, and public health. This multidisciplinary foundation allows for an innovative, adaptable, and critical research approach. Her primary interests lie in socio-spatial connectivity, and social and environmental determinants of health. Identity, space, and place are further interests of Maya’s. Maya utilises a variety of methods in her research including qualitative such as photovoice and interviews as well as GIS. The combination of these in novel ways is a key aspect of her work.

Melinda Covey-Hansen is a seasoned Health Promotion Practitioner, bringing over 15 years of experience to the forefront of her work in shaping healthy and active communities.  Specialising in impactful policies, plans, and programs within local government, Melinda has been both a leader of and contributor to numerous healthy and active living, transport and recreation initiatives.  Melinda is currently completing a PhD with the University of Southern Queensland, focusing on active living, transport and recreation policy in local government.  Melinda is also a research assistant with the University of Southern Queensland, contributing to various system-mapping, citizen science, health-supportive environments and community-led research projects aimed at creating healthy and active communities.

Michèle Young has over 16 years’ private sector experience as a qualified Architect working on design and delivery of commercial office and education projects, in the UK and Europe. Between 2010-2020 she worked in the international humanitarian and development sector as Asia Regional Shelter and Construction Adviser for Save the Children International. Work focussed on the delivery of emergency shelter, housing (permanent) and social infrastructure (re)construction in a variety of contexts (Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific). Since December 2020, she has been employed as a Development Coordination Manager in the Infrastructure Planning team at Tower Hamlets council. The role was created to establish whether the council has a role in proactively facilitating innovative and practical solutions to tackling the combined negative impacts of construction on residents and businesses at an area wide scale.

Dr Mikel Subiza-Perez obtained a PhD in Environmental Psychology in the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU (Spain) in 2019, where he works now as a postdoctoral researcher. He is also an honorary research fellow at the Bradford Institute for Health Research. He conducts research on environmental epidemiology and psychology, mostly aimed at understanding how urban environmental exposures shape behaviour and health. He is particularly intrigued about which factors, and through which processes, foster healthier and more sustainable lives and works with the vision of generating evidence to inspire public policies and interventions.

Natasha Reid is founder of MATTER SPACE SOUL, a specialist design consultancy and creative lab shaping places for health, wellbeing and social sustainability. Having trained and practiced in architecture, she has focused on the social, psychological and emotional impacts of places over the last decade and often speaks at conferences on forward-thinking approaches to pressing urban issues. She is a “Healthy Places and Inclusive Design” expert for two London borough review panels, Fellow with the Center for Conscious Design and an Associate with the Quality of Life Foundation. She studied Architecture at Cambridge University and gained a Distinction for her Professional Diploma in Architecture at The Cass. She is an advocate for the power of design to create change that matters, recognised in international publications such as Wallpaper* and Elle Decoration, as a "Groundbreaker" and "Women to Watch".

A behavioural scientist with a background in psychology researching transport safety and injury prevention through a public health lens. Her research encompasses the aetiology, epidemiology and impacts of unintentional injury and implications for policy and practice. Recently this has developed into an interest in how safety impacts sustainable and healthy mobility. Experienced in using exploratory, ethnographic techniques to understand complex social phenomena and human factors associated with the causes and consequences of injury and mixed methods approaches to evaluation including natural experiments, quasi-experimental and qualitative designs.

Nicola is the co-Headteacher of Surrey Square Primary School where she has worked since 2006. Surrey Square is part of the Big Education Trust which is 'rethinking school' to ensure that schools value more than just the traditional curriculum and academic outcomes. 'At Surrey Square, we are 'more than a school', which means that we work together from the core, equipping the community to thrive and build a better world for themselves and others. Nicola's own life experiences have made her passionate about the importance of well-being. The well-being of staff, pupils, their families and, in recent years with the creation of the Old Kent Road Family Zone, the wider community is at the heart of the work at the school. The Old Kent Road Family Zone is the school's answer to tackling community well being with a new 'doing with' approach. In all areas of her work, Nicola believes passionately in developing capacity and has worked extensively as a coach and trainer especially focused on leadership development. She thrives on developing those around her and being authentically engaged with stakeholders of the community she serves. Nicola juggles Head Teacher life with being a mum to three children and works flexibly in her role.

Nicole is a creative landscape architect, with experience in delivering a wide range of high quality large and small scale projects on site. Nicole has a wide-ranging experience, working and managing landscape designs for education developments, commercial, housing, environmental assessment, parks, open spaces, residential, Masterplanning and regeneration-based projects. She further has experience on working with a variety of interrelated built environment disciplines to design and deliver technical complicated masterplans and in the running of works on site. Prior to joining Arup, Nicole was part of a number of small specialised landscape practices, through which she has developed a hands on and people orientated approach to all aspects of work; consultation; initial design, planning applications, production of planning, tender and construction packages; successfully incorporating clients, end users, the public and design professionals from inception through to completion.

Otto Lussenburg is a researcher at the Healthy City professorship via the NoorderRuimte Knowledge Center at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen. As a researcher, he is active in directing research by students at the InnovatieWerkPlaats (Innovation Workshop) Wijklab Korrewegwijk and coaching and guiding students at various other innovation workshops on the theme of Health and Well-being. Based on his lifelong fascination with photography, he started a limited pilot Photovoice in the Korreweg district in Groningen. Otto is a generalist, which is due to his broad interests, which make him feel at home with a wide range of subjects. After studying Engineering Geology at TU Delft, he qualified as an environmental consultant in soil research and remediation, environmental management and Corporate Social Responsibility. In addition to the role of researcher, he fulfilled various management roles (department manager, interim manager) at the consultancy firms where he worked. As a self-employed person, he was, among other things, area development program manager for the revitalization of an industrial estate. Since 2013, he has also worked as a lecturer in Corporate Social Responsibility at Hanze University of Applied Sciences. Additional positions: commissioner at Energy Cooperative Duurzaam Assen, volunteer.

Paolo is a creative landscape architect and skilled communicator with an international background and outlook. He has extensive experience leading large, complex multi-disciplinary projects across various sectors. Paolo joined Arup in 2016, having previously worked as both an architect and landscape architect in Italy, France, and the UK. He is a chartered architect and landscape architect in Italy and joined Architects Registration Board (ARB) upon moving to London. With dual training and a holistic perspective, Paolo has been involved in diverse projects spanning masterplans, street and public spaces, parks, strategic frameworks, design codes, as well as construction and project delivery. His international project experience extends across Europe, the UK, GCC, China, and South America, providing him with a deep understanding of cultural and design contexts within these regions. Presently, Paolo is honing his expertise in the Nature-based Solution (NbS) sector, focusing on their application for generating climate resilience, particularly in the Global South. He firmly believes that NbS are a potent tool in addressing the global climate crisis while simultaneously contributing to the creation of communities that are resilient to climate change, environmentally sensitive, and supportive of the local economy.

Paula is an urban and regional planner and “pracademic” with 30 years’ senior executive experience in statutory and strategic planning in Queensland. She is currently the program director of the urban and regional planning program at the University of Southern Queensland. She is a Registered Planner and Fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) and a member of the editorial board the Australian Planner and the PIA National Education Committee. She has a strong attachment to and interest in the future of vibrant regional communities.

I am a Senior Clinical Lecturer in the Department of Public Health, Policy and Systems at The University of Liverpool. My background is in medicine specialising in Public Health. My research areas of interest include disability, with a particular focus on employment, perinatal outcomes, particularly preterm birth, and the generation of health inequalities, specifically understanding the causal pathways that lead to socioeconomic inequalities in health. I have published peer reviewed research in these areas. I have worked with the World Health Organisation (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Policy Research on Social Determinants of Health on reports about health equity and working conditions, and a range of local partners in health and social care and the wider determinants of health.

Rachel works in healthcare innovation leading regional projects in the North East of England. Originally qualified as a clinician with a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology Rachel has developed more than 15 years’ experience in project management and service improvement roles and more latterly completed a degree in urban planning and architecture. Her interests lie in the connections between wellbeing and urban design and how to support the creation of healthy, happy, fun places where people and communities can thrive. Rachel is co-creator of the programme, Healthy Happy Places, which is focusing specifically on how we can create positive mental health and wellbeing through the built environment by sharing expertise and knowledge between the NHS, public health, regeneration and planning, design, architecture, the arts and citizens; and using creative participation to nudge and inspire the design of places and spaces. Exploring ways of putting ‘tactical urbanism’ into action in places with deep inequalities using a set of evidence based 'ingredients' to guide possibilities in place. This is currently being tested and applied in practice to projects in the North East.

Rebecca is a lecturer in epidemiology and public health in the Department of Public Health, Policy, and Systems at the University of Liverpool. She is a rigorous and innovative mixed-methods researcher with international experience of conducting research on health inequalities. She has strong training in epidemiology, statistical modelling, natural experiments, mixed methods research, and study design. She has expertise in the analysis of longitudinal and linked administrative and survey data. Rebecca is a principal investigator on a Wellcome Trust Research Enrichment grant to support the Wellcome Trust funded birth cohort Children Growing up in Liverpool with a multi-year arts-based public engagement programme and is an investigator on the birth cohort itself. Rebecca is also a co-principal investigator on an Economic and Social Research Council grant on whether the two-child limit to welfare policy and cuts to contraceptive services in Britain has impacted abortion rates and household poverty. Her commitment to under- and post-graduate teaching has been recognised with the award of Fellow of the Higher Education Association (2018). Prior to joining the University of Liverpool, Rebecca was an Associate Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists where she led the development and evaluation of quality-of-care indicators and was a methodological advisor to the National Maternity and Perinatal Health Audit.

Dr Robert G MacDonald is an architect and Public Advisor ARC NWC with experience of designing Housing Cooperatives and publishing about “Design for Dementia”, Vols 1/2/3. He also published “DIY CITY” which involved over 20 communities in designing their own environments. Rob is a service user and volunteer with MerseyCare NHS Foundation Trust where he teaches “Art for Mental Well Being.” Dr Robert MacDonald and Jon Humphreys published ‘Imagine Liverpool’ and ‘Morphocity’ which included many visions and dreams of the future. ‘Morphocity’ is an exploration of the City reimagined including a chapter on the Liverpool Housing Cooperatives.’ Rob was presented with The Roscoe Citizenship Award (2014) by Lord David Alton. Rob was presented with The Design in Mental Health Network Award (2019) Recognition by Dr Phillip Hammond BBC TV.

Rosie McEachan is the Director of Born in Bradford and a proud (Scottish) Bradfordian. She is an experienced applied health researcher with particular interests in cohort studies, development and evaluation of complex interventions, environmental determinants of health, green space, air quality, and co-production. Rosie holds a visiting professor position at University College London and an honorary chair position at the University of Bradford.

Rukun Khalaf is a PhD student based at the University of Liverpool. Her work focuses on Green and Blue Spaces (GBS) and their relationship with maternal health and health inequalities. Her work is funded through a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) School for Public Health (SPHR) PhD studentship.

Ruth's work primarily involves investigating how we can improve our urban environment for better population health and planetary health. She is particularly interested in research at the intersection of public health and planetary health. Her work involves the application of systems-thinking and complexity science methods, as well as social network analysis, causal inference and computer vision methods.

Ruwanthi's research combines two key strategies: (i) developing statistical analysis methods for most efficient use of the data available, and (ii) translating this knowledge into clinical applications. Most of her research is motivated by applications in public, clinical and biomedical disciplines to ultimately help improve health outcomes for people.

I am a 5th Year Medical Student at the University of Birmingham. I have an Intercalated Degree in Medical Humanities (BA) and a strong interest in the interdisciplinary overlap between public health, the humanities, and the social sciences.

Selin is a research fellow in the Environmental Epidemiology Population, Policy & Practice Department at University College London.

Sem Lee is the Founder of OURI Labs, an urban strategist, social entrepreneur and facilitator focused on understanding the effects of the built environment on health and wellbeing and addressing the social challenges surrounding it. Sem holds a MSc in Health, Wellbeing and Sustainable Buildings from UCL, an MBA, and has over 10 years experience project and programme managing projects in diverse sectors across communications, sustainability and service design. Sem has worked with public, private and third sector organisations helping to facilitate difficult discussions and co-creating futures using evaluation and participatory tools, whilst working between policy and practice.

Shreya Shukla is a Researcher and an Architect by profession, who is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, as a part of the “Happiness by Design” Research Group. She has received the esteemed Prime Minister Research Fellowship (PMRF) from the Ministry of Education, Government of India for her doctoral research. Over the past few years, she has worked in the research area of mapping emotions for designing healthy cities, and neighbourhood design for the mental well-being of the elderly.

Sophia began her PhD at the University of Sheffield in October 2021 as part of the White Rose-funded ARC Doctoral Cohort. Her research aims to evaluate the School Streets intervention as a method to improve air quality, active travel and children’s safety and independence. Sophia is also a Research Assistant for the Born in Bradford Research Program, located at the Bradford Institute for Health Research.

I have a professional background in local government practice and over twenty years' experience of evidence-informed policy making. A former Director at Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and Knowsley Council, I have senior leadership experience of delivering public services, including complex programmes where activities are undertaken by partners across multiple agencies. In my current role as Co-Director of the University of Liverpool's Heseltine Institute I lead engagement across local and regional stakeholders to align academic research with place-based policy to support sustainable cities and city regions. This includes acting as academic advisor to the Liverpool City Region All Party Parliamentary Group, evaluating the impact of national policies on local prosperity and leading key agendas of civic engagement. My research areas of interest are public policy, employment and skills, local economic development strategies and regional devolution. I am interested in community engagement practice and have secured and delivered research grant from UKRI and the British Academy for place-based collaborations involving local communities, policymakers and practitioners that support economic and social impacts. As a co-applicant in the successful bid by Liverpool City Council for a Health Determinants Research Collaboration (NIHR159187) I am leading knowledge translation activities.

Dr Tiffany Yang is a Principal Research Fellow with the Born in Bradford (BiB) family of projects at the Bradford Institute for Health Research. She gained her PhD from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and is interested in the health impacts of environmental exposures including air pollution, green space, and chemical exposures, the evaluation of public health interventions, and increasing collaborations to enhance the use and impact of cohort data.

Experienced to Director level having entrepreneurially led the transformation and rebuilding of a business. Identified numerous market and organisational transformation opportunities and created innovative solutions in pressured situations. Proven ability to operate in both private and public sectors and a strong belief in creating value for customers. Highly adaptable, with a fundamental understanding of the Healthcare, Aerospace, Aviation Support, Logistics, and Construction sectors, and with a wealth of contacts across each. Able to creatively transfer learning and best practice from one to another. A talent for Innovation, and Systems Thinking. Intrapreneurially working to transfer Engineering Management approaches including Lean and Soft Systems Methodology into the NHS for service design and transformation. Previous leading role in rebuilding, retraining and moulding attitudes of management and operations teams during business transformation. Developing and nurturing a culture of success in teams.

Tina Pujara is a professor of Architecture and Urban Design with a specialization in ‘neighbourhood design and happiness’ at the Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T) Roorkee in India. Her work focuses specifically on the association of happiness with the built environment. Tina has been a recipient of the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship and was an academic guest researching on urban design at ETH Zurich in Switzerland prior to joining IIT Roorkee.

Professor Tracy Kolbe-Alexander has substantial experience in community-based participatory research methods and citizen science programs that aim to address health and equity outcomes. Her main research focus explores the role of the social, built and natural environment in supporting wellbeing in communities, including those with low socio-economic status, regional and remote areas, and the Global South. Using various strategies and methodologies, including participatory community-based and systems science approaches, she has developed, implemented and evaluated health promotion programs in different settings. Her research has been translated into policy and practice.

Dr. Warawoot Chuangchai is currently a visiting fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge. He holds a PhD in medical engineering and is a former visiting PhD student at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, University of Oxford. He received postdoctoral fellowships for research projects involving heart-brain connections, ergonomics, urban green spaces, and inclusive design. As an interior architect, he worked in a senior position in design firms where he specialised in hospitality and hotel design for more than seven years.

Dr. Yuan Shi is currently a Lecturer in Environmental Planning. Before joining the University of Liverpool, he was a Research Assistant Professor at the Centre of Urban Sustainability, Institute of Future Cities, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on evidence-based sustainable, climate-adaptive, healthy urban planning and development with a specific focus on the interactions between urban form and atmosphere as well as the impacts on urban sustainability and human health. With his research outputs and impacts, he is on Scopus's list of the Top 500 authors (#139 based on field-weighted citation impact in 2020-2024) by Scholarly Output in the United Kingdom within the Field of Research for Geography, Planning, and Development. He also serves on the editorial board of leading climate journals and is active in several global collaborative research communities & networks about urban climate resilience. https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/environmental-sciences/staff/yuan-shi/

Dr Yvonne Chan Cashmore, as the Associate Dean and Director of Engagement for the Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies at AUT University, is a trailblazer in fostering authentic collaboration and transdisciplinary innovation driving positive social impact. With an unwavering belief in the power of combining disciplines, cultures, and technology, she envisions a world where collective efforts pave the way for evolution and success, not just at work, but in all aspects of life. An advocate for transdisciplinary practice, Yvonne advocates the integration of creative practices within the STEM and design fields, pushing and evolving the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Her research focuses on women in leadership and well-being, championing the importance of maintaining traditional cultural practices through contemporary solutions. She supervises postgraduate students exploring cultural practices and using technologies to create evolved well-being solutions. Yvonne's journey is stimulated by her divine connection with textiles, fashion, colour, culture, and technologies. With a background in Smart and high-performance textiles, her expertise has evolved to embrace transformative technologies and healing methodologies. She pioneers interactive healing textiles, fashion, and smart environments, where innovation and well-being merge seamlessly. Her vision encompasses a harmonious blend of disciplines, unorthodox materials, and technology, emphasizing the importance of preserving and learning from traditional cultural practices and natural environments. Yvonne embodies the spirit of pushing boundaries, knowing that true evolution lies in embracing diversity and unconventional approaches.