Our People
Centre Management
Cathy Oke
Centre Director
Michele Acuto
Professor of Global Urban Politics
Alison Young
Deputy Director (Academic), Lead: Seminar Series, Retreat and Annual Lecture
Alexei Trundle
Associate Director (International), Lead: International Partnerships
Sarah Bell
City of Melbourne Chair in Urban Resilience and Innovation, Lead: City of Melbourne Program
Sabina Andron
Early Career Academics Convener
Centre Administration
Paola Rossi
Finance Officer
Marita Doak
Centre Coordinator
Maria Pia Dunne
Communications Officer
Andrew Irvin
Project Officer - Urban Innovation
Centre Fellows
Centre Fellows are a committed, multi-disciplinary, and engaged community forming the Centre’s core team of scholars and practitioners.
Michele Acuto
Professor of Global Urban Politics
Ash Alam
Senior Lecturer
Sabina Andron
Postdoc Research Fellow in Cities and Urbanism
Sarah Bell
City of Melbourne Chair in Urban Resilience and Innovation, Lead: City of Melbourne Program
Joyati Das
Enterprise Principal Fellow
Anna Edwards
Research Fellow In Urban Studies Architecture, Building and Planning
Bianca Fileborn
Senior Lecturer in Criminology
Max Holleran
Lecturer in Sociology
Enzo Lara - Hamilton
Research Assistant in The Retrofit Lab
Lutfun Nahar Lata
Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy
Rewa Marathe
Research Fellow, Evidence to Action
Jesse Mentha
Research Assistant - Night-Shift
Cathy Oke
Melbourne Enterprise Principal Fellow in Informed Cities
Elise Park
Research Assistant - Disinformation in the City
Rebekah Plueckhahn
Lecturer in Anthropology
Daniel Pejic
Research Fellow in International Urban Migration
Melissa Pineda Pinto
McKenzie Research Fellow
William Ridge
PhD Student and Research Assistant
Kylie Soanes
Research Fellow, Urban Biodiversity
Ika Trijsburg
Research Fellow City Diplomacy
Alexei Trundle
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Sustainable Urban Development
Alison Young
Professor of Criminology
Renee Miller-Yeaman
Research Fellow In Urban Studies Architecture, Building and Planning
Sookyan Wong
Graduate Researcher (Map of the Month)
Graduate Researchers
Loren Adams
Socio-Spatial Exploits: A Critical Anthology of Heists, Hacks, Hijacks, and Copycats
Chethna Ben
Climate Change Impacts, Migration and Human Security: Grassroot perspectives from Informal Settlements in Fiji
Elisabetta Crovara
Changing the workplace: embodied geographies and mobilities of coworking spaces
Sophie Devine
Metropolitan governance and cross-sectoral infrastructure planning
Hannah Fairlamb
Grassroots gender equality interventions in DIY music scenes in Australia
Uly Faoziyah
Voices from the suburbs: facing large scale development in South Sulawesi Provinces, Indonesia
Anastasia Gramatakos
More than the who, what and where: Investigating Urban Food Forestry holistically through a relational and temporal SES lens
Samuel Holleran
Cemeteries as Civic Spaces: Public Participation in the Planning of Urban Burial Sites
Amelia Leavesley
Scaling sustainability: the role of cities in multilevel waste governance
Kajsa Lundberg
Ordinary Harms and Extraordinary Crises: Environmental harm and fire on the edges of the city
Carolina Mayen Huerta
Equity in access to urban green spaces (UGS) and its effect on well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic
Hannah McNicol
The Belt and Road Initiative, the ‘Second’ Global Cold War and competition for infrastructure financing in Special Economic Zones in Cambodia
Emma McRae
Participation, collaboration and speculation in urban digital twin visualisations
Sombol Mokhles
Climate Change Experimentation in International City Networks
Merrick Morley
Community resilience and shared spaces: navigating identity and difference in new multi-residential developments in metropolitan Melbourne
Caitlin Morrissey
Making Up the Global City
Jana Perkovic
Form Follows Finance: Redesigning Housing Markets
Denise Ryan
Graduate Researcher
Alana Scully
Structures of Desire: Crisis and Australia’s national fantasy
Joanna Stubbs
Visiting Fellows
Visiting Fellows are engaging practitioners and scholars outside of the University of Melbourne who join the Centre community for a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and culture, plus enriching collaborations.
Maya Costa Pinto
Visiting Fellow
Pablo Fuentenebro Alonso
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in International Urban Politics
Nicolas Gharbi
Visiting Fellow
Kris Hartley
A/Professor of Public Policy, The Education University of Hong Kong
Advisory Board
The Centre’s advisory board provides strategic input into our direction and focus, and supports the Centre’s Management Team and Director in ensure we address pressing and impactful urban issues locally, domestically and internationally.
Professor Michael Wesley | Deputy Vice-Chancellor Global, Culture and Engagement | University of Melbourne |
Professor Mark Hargreaves | Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) | University of Melbourne |
Alison Leighton | Chief Executive Officer | City of Melbourne |
Dr Catherine Brown | Chief Executive Officer | Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation |
Professor Winston Chow | Associate Professor of Urban Climate | Singapore Management University |
Rachel Huxley | Head of Mitigation and Climate and Health | Wellcome Trust |
Anthony F. Pipa | Senior Fellow in the Centre for Sustainable Development | Brookings Institution |
Aromar Revi | Director | Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) |
Malcom Smith | Australasian Cities Leader | ARUP |
Molly Whelan | Acting CEO | Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) |
Kelly Grigsby | Chief Executive Officer | Municipal Association of Victoria |
Centre Associates
Centre Associates represent the Centre as champions in their respective academic divisions and are active participants in our community.
Simon Batterbury, Faculty of Science | Matthew Champion, Faculty of Arts |
Annisa Beta, Faculty of Arts | Una McIlvenna, Faculty of Arts |
Amy Hahs, Faculty of Science | Jeff Garmany, Faculty of Arts |
Peter Rush, Faculty of Law | James Murphy, Faculty of Arts |
Theresa Jones, Faculty of Science | Kirsten Parris, Faculty of Science |
Stephen Livesley, Faculty of Science | Catherine Phillips, Faculty of Science |
Claire Maree, Faculty of Arts | Megan Sharp, Faculty of Arts |
Ariane Utomo, Faculty of Science | Mark Yaolin Wang, Faculty of Science |