Professor Ali Madanipour
Ali Madanipour is Professor of Urban Design at Newcastle University (UK) and an internationally recognized scholar in urban planning, design, and social inclusion. His research examines how cities evolve through the interaction of spatial organization, social processes, and time — with a particular focus on developing more inclusive and sustainable urban environments.
Ali Madanipour has studied (MArch, PhD), practised, researched, and taught architecture, urban design and planning, winning design and research awards, and working with academic and municipal partners from around the world. His work has been translated into French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Persian and Spanish. His visiting positions include the City of Vienna Senior Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Vienna, the Wits-Claude Leon Distinguished Scholar at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and Visiting Professor at the Polytechnic of Milan.
Professor Madanipour’s work explores the social production of space, analyzing how design practices intersect with social structures and power relations to shape everyday urban life. He has contributed extensively to international debates on public space, urban regeneration, social inclusion, and the authenticity of urban environments in an era of globalization.
His publications address key themes such as authenticity and urbanism, interstitial spaces, urban design and society, dynamic multiplicity, and rethinking public space. Among his influential works are Design of Urban Space, Public Space: The Management Dimension, Seeing the City, and numerous journal articles that have significantly shaped contemporary urban theory and practice.
Prof. Dr. L.G. (Ina) Horlings
Ina Horlings is a full Professor (Aletta Jacobs chair) in Socio-Spatial Planning at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences of the University of Groningen (RUG) since 2016. She supervises students and PhDs and coordinates the master course ‘Engaging Society in Spatial Transformation’. She also works as Research Director of the Faculty of Spatial Sciences and developed the new Faculty research program TRACE. Her ambition is to increase the societal impact of research. She manages the Expertise team ‘Engaging Society’ within the Department of Spatial Planning. Within RUG she aims to support research on sustainability and climate change via her engagement in two RUG schools.
Her current research focuses on the question how and why collective civic initiatives and communities respond to climate change in the Netherlands and Europe. She has published on topics such as place-based development, collective action, food, values and leadership. She has been active in various projects, including two international training- and research programmes with each 15 PhDs: Sustainable Place-shaping (SUSPLACE) and Resourceful communities (RECOMS).
She has an interdisciplinary background, completed an applied science study in land- and water management, obtained a master’s degree in social (environmental) geography at the Radboud University in Nijmegen (RUN) and finalised a PhD at this University on the topic of collective sustainable behaviour of farmers. She worked at various academic and non-academic organisations, including the Ministry of Agriculture Nature & Fisheries, The Telos Centre of Sustainability in Tilburg, the School for City and Regional Planning at Cardiff University, and the Rural Sociology Group of the University of Wageningen, before she went to Groningen.
