Hesam Kamalipour
Dr Hesam Kamalipour is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Urban Design at the Welsh School of Architecture and Co-Founding Director of the Public Space Observatory Research Centre at Cardiff University, where he served as Co-Director of the MA Urban Design programme. He is also the Founding Director of the Informal Urban Design Research Lab and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Advance HE. His work lies at the intersections of urban design, informal urbanism, public space, urban morphology, and comparative urbanism. He has explored a wide range of international case studies from different countries, and his contributions have been internationally recognised, with a sustained track record of extensive publications, many of which are widely and highly cited. Dr Kamalipour led a major handbook project titled ‘The Routledge Handbook of Urban Design Research Methods’ (Routledge, 2023), featuring chapters by 80 international contributors from over 20 countries worldwide. He also led a substantial monograph project titled ‘Urban Design Education: Designing a Pedagogy for an Evolving Field’ (Edward Elgar, 2025) and co-authored an in-press research monograph titled ‘Spatiality of Street Vending’ (Routledge, 2026). He is currently authoring a forthcoming monograph titled ‘Informal Design’ (Routledge) and a further book titled ‘Framing Urbanism’ (Palgrave Macmillan). Dr Kamalipour is an Associate Editor of Frontiers in Sustainable Cities – Cities in the Global South and an Editorial Board member of Habitat International (Elsevier), Cities (Elsevier), Urban Design and Planning (Emerald), The Journal of Public Space (City Space Architecture), Journal of Urban Management (Elsevier), and International Journal of Architectural Research (Emerald), among others.