Hesam Kamalipour
Dr. Hesam Kamalipour is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Urban Design and the 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 is currently engaged in a number of contracted book projects, including co-authoring a research monograph on the spatiality of street vending (Routledge), authoring another on informal urban design (Routledge), and writing a further one on framing urbanism (Palgrave Macmillan). Dr Kamalipour is a member of the Urban Design Group, the Academy of Urbanism, and the Architectural Humanities Research Association, among others. He is an Associate Editor of Frontiers in Sustainable Cities - Cities in the Global South and an editorial team 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), International Journal of Architectural Research (Emerald), Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (Springer Nature), and Urban Planning (Cogitatio).