Evolving Education: Opening Event 

Speaker Biography: Caroline Newton is an architect, urban planner and political scientist. She holds a PhD in social geography from the University of Leuven (Belgium). Her work and research focus on the socio spatial dimensions of design and critical spatial practices in Europe and the Global South. Her research interests are centered on the interrelationship between social processes and the built environment.  She has been working on (informal) dwelling and participatory upgrading, the challenge of design and planning in post colonial environments and also on the methodological and pedagogical challenges of a ‘designerly way of knowledge production’.  Additionally, she has an interest in the integration of real and virtual words and their role for architecture and urban design and planning education. Caroline is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Housing and the Built Environment and an expert on socio-spatial planning in the GECORO of Mechelen. For more information, please visit her personal website.

Speaker Biography: Dr Roberto Rocco is an Associate Professor of Spatial Planning and Strategy at Bouwkunde.   Roberto is trained as an architect and spatial planner with a master’s in planning by the University of São Paulo, a specialisation in urban management tools by the Ecole d’Urbanisme de Paris (former Institut Français d’Urbanisme) and a PhD by TU Delft. Roberto specialises on governance for the built environment and social sustainability, as well as issues of governance in regional planning and design. This includes issues of spatial justice as a crucial dimension of sustainability transitions. Roberto has also published extensively about informal urbanisation in the Global South and he does research on how informal institutions influence and shape planning at the local level. He is a consultant for the Union for the Mediterranean and has recently drafted the UfM Action Plan for Sustainable Urbanisation 2040. For more details, please visit his personal website.