Our Team
Collaborating Institutions
In addition to our official partnerships with UN-Habitat, RMIT University, and IFRC, we regularly collaborate with more than 30 other organizations that provide our students with quality internships. Our students have completed internships in more than 113 institutions all around the world, forming a diverse network that our alumni benefit from.
Steering Committee
Carmen Mendoza Arroyo
DirectorArchitect and PhD in Urban Design and Planning. Associate Professor at UIC School of Architecture. She is co-founder of the firm DAC Arquitectura, Rehabilitació i Urbanisme, which specialize in developing urban projects and the design of open spaces and social facilities. Her research is focused on the physical and social regeneration of degraded neighborhoods in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona and informal settlements in South America.
Allison Koornneef
CoordinatorAllison is from Toronto, Canada and has a background in Environmental Design from OCAD University. As a graduate of our 2012-13 class, her thesis analyzed participatory data gathering processes in informal settlements, and during her internship with SPARC in Mumbai, India, she contributed to a sanitation survey using GIS mapping. She is passionate about water and sanitation, mapping, and participatory action as sustainable development.
Sandra Bestraten
Honorary Director & Committee MemberFounding member of the Master Program. Assistant professor at UIC School of Architecture and at ETSAB-UPC. President of University without Borders (USF), where she develops urban planning and social and educational facilities with social participation. Co-founder of Bestraten Hormias Arquitectura, which specializes in sustainable projects using ecological materials such as timber and rammed earth. Her research is focused on housing and cooperation in developing countries.
Emilio Hormias
Honorary Director & Committee MemberFounding member of the Master Program. Associate Professor at EPSEB-UPC. Coordinator of the NGO University without Borders – USF. Emilio implements social and educational facilities and planning projects in developing countries and his research is focused on building restoration and low cost materials. He is also co-funder of the firm Bestraten Hormias Arquitectura SLP, in Barcelona.
Core Staff
Mbongeni Ngulube
Development practice & DiasporaArchitect and Urban Designer. Worked in South Africa and founder of MNA architects, Johannesburg. Master in International Cooperation in Urban Development (TUD, Germany) and in Housing, Urbanisation and Sustainability in Developing Contexts (UIC, Spain). Currently a Doctoral researcher in the Anthropology of Development and Urbanism at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium), his research focuses on the impact of diaspora and social movements on development.
Apen Ruiz
Cultural heritage & Gender in developmentPhD in Anthropology. Her PhD research examined the relations among anthropology and gender in Mexico. She has written various articles and a book on this topic. Her current research interests lie in the interactions between heritage and communities with a focus on how gender needs to be introduced in every phase of research, and the investigation of sexual violence and protocols to detect violence in research institutions. She is a member of Simref, a group of scholars interested in feminist qualitative methodologies, and has been advisor for students working with issues of gender and development, heritage and memory and the politics of development.
Pere Vall
Cultural landscapesArchitect. PhD in Urban Design and Planning. Associate Professor at UIC School of Architecture. His research is focused on cultural landscapes and regional development. He is co founder of the Llobregat Colonies’ River Park, an initiative of territorial revaluation based on cultural heritage, which has received several awards. In this field, he has developed projects and plans and he has also published several papers. He is currently working on the study of the sprawl repair through heritage networks.
Kathrin Golda-Pongratz
Migration & Self-organizing urbanizationArchitect, urban researcher and curator. PhD in Urban Planning from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Professor of International Urbanism at the University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt between 2013 and 2018. Currently professor at the UIC and visiting professor at different Peruvian universities. Author of numerous publications, among them co-author of the book „John F.C. Turner. Autoconstrucción. Por una autonomia del habitar“ (FAD Award in Thought and Criticism 2019). Member of the Academia Europaea and of the Institut dels Passats Presents of Barcelona’s city council. Her research focuses on urbanization processes and migration, Latin American urbanism, housing policies, structural change of urban societies, postcolonial urbanization, non-formal urbanism and place-making strategies, public space and urban memory.
Hug March
Political ecology & Economy of urbanizationPhD in Environmental Sciences from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), 2010. Hug is a research fellow at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. His research is focused on the political ecology and economy of urbanization and has contributed to debates around urban water infrastructure and water provision. He has contributed to over 20 publications to journals in the fields of Geography, Environmental Studies/Sciences, Urban Studies and Economics, among other disciplines.
Marta Benages
Suburban spaces & Collective identityPhD in Architecture, UIC Barcelona (2015). Assistant professor at the School of Architecture UIC Barcelona. Marta's research focuses on qualitative methodologies and access to communities' experiential knowledge, working within urbanism, landscape planning and environmental psychology. In this field, she studies the process of appropriation of open spaces in metropolitan areas in order to recognize people-place bonds and citizen engagement to landscapes of collective identity.
Lorenzo Chelleri
Urban sustainability & ResiliencePhD in Urban Geography. He is currently a Postodctoral Research Fellow at the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI Cities), and founder member and coordinator of the Urban Resilience Research Network. He has worked for the European Environment Agency, and has been involved in different European and international projects on climate resilience and urban sustainability. His main research interest is around the social implications of urban transitions.
Visiting Professors & Collaborators
Isabelle Anguelovski
BCNUEJSocial scientist. PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research is situated at the intersection of environmental policy and planning, social inequality, and development studies. Her recent research has examined environmental mobilization and revitalization in low-income and minority neighborhoods in the Global North and South. She has worked for international development organizations and consults for NGOs on indigenous peoples’ rights, urban and environmental planning, gender policy, and urban climate mitigation and adaptation programs.
Nerea Amorós Elorduy
Creative AssemblagesM.Arch, PhD (UCL). Alumni of our masters program. Nerea is an architect and researcher with experience in refugee assistance, education, and health projects with emphasis on community participation in East Africa and in post-conflict environments. She contributed to create the School of Architecture at the University of Rwanda and co-founded ASA Studio based in Kigali. Her PhD research focused on mapping the built environment elements that affect young children’s learning living in long-term refugee camps in Southwest Uganda, Rwanda, and Northwest Kenya. She is the founder of the interdisciplinary studio Creative Assemblages in Kampala, Uganda.
Veronica Sánchez
Independent ResearcherArchitect and independent researcher. Verónica has been working with various organizations in the Humanitarian Aid field and is an expert in the development of human settlements in Third World countries, as well as in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in international development and emergencies. She is the co-director of Proceso de Proyecto Atelier and co-founder of n'UNDO, which advocates a different way of doing architecture. Her research includes refugee camps and informal settlements, and she currently is writing her PhD investigation thesis about Ebola Management Centres.
Alejandro de Castro
Latin Lab, GSAPP Columbia UniversityArchitect with a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University in New York and a PhD in Architecture, he coordinated GSAPP’s Latin Lab from 2010 to 2016 and has taught at Harvard University, the Pratt Institute and the Technical University Darmstadt, among others. Alejandro's work explores the rhetorical dimension of planning and architecture in marginalized communities to propose spatial practices that are sensitive to both form and policy.
Melissa García Lamarca
BCNUEJMelissa holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Manchester, an MSc in Building and Urban Design in Development from University College London, a Graduate Diploma in Community Economic Development from Concordia University and a BA in Geography and Economics from McGill University. She is explores the structures and channels through which political economic processes generate urban inequalities, as well as how collective urban struggles can disrupt the inegalitarian status quo and open up new alternatives.
Alejandro Haiek
LAB.PRO.FABArchitect, Universidad Central de Venezuela. Co-Founder and Director of LAB.PRO.FAB (Laboratory of Design and Fabrication), a cross-disciplinary practice focused on the renewal and resuscitation of inactive landscapes and degraded social contexts with a strong focus on reuse, recycling and the application of local intelligence. He is a professor and member of the academic committee of design at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at Universidad Central de Venezuela, won the The International Award for Public Art in 2013 for the ongoing project Tiuna El Fuerte Cultural Park, and has published research papers in Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Peru.
Nabeel Hamdi
Oxford Brookes UniversityArchitect. He is Professor Emeritus of Housing and Urban Development at Oxford Brookes University, where he set up the highly successful Masters in Development Practice in 1992. He is a teaching fellow at The Development Planning Unit, University College London, has been an Arup Fellow at the University of Cape Town and is adjunct professor at the National University of Technology, Trondhiem, Norway. An advocate of small-scale change at grass-roots level, Nabeel has consulted on participatory action planning and upgrading of slums in cities to all major international development agencies, and to NGOs worldwide. He is the author of several landmark publications, including Small Change and Housing without Houses.
Sergio Palleroni
Portland State UniversityArchitect. MSArchS in History Theory & Criticism from the MIT. Co-founder of BaSiC Initiative, he has worked on housing and community development in the developing world since the 1970’s, both for not-for-profit, governmental, and international development and relief agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank, and the governments of Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, India and Taiwan. He is Professor and Fellow of the new Center for Sustainable Processes and Practices at Portland State University and has received numerous awards, including the prestigious AIA Latrobe Prize in 2011.
Andreas Schiffer
WASH & LogisticsAndreas has over 25 years experience in humanitarian responses to disasters and conflicts. He has worked with NGOs such as MSF, Acción contra el Hambre and Intermon Oxfam as a logistician, coordinator, WASH expert, consultant, trainer and researcher in numerous countries around the world. Since 2006 he works as a freelance consultant and trainer, organizing courses in humanitarian logistics and WASH with his enterprise FLASH, dedicated to strengthening the impact of humanitarian actors through practical, technical and bespoke training for NGO staff and other professionals looking to improve their impact in the humanitarian field.
Marta Peña
IFRCArchitect, specialized in construction by ETSAM. She has worked as an architect for seven years in Spain before working in international cooperation with the Red Cross in 2005. Since then she has coordinated emergency shelter response and post-disaster reconstruction programs in Sri Lanka, Peru, Senegal, Haiti and the Philippines. She is currently based in Geneva, Switzerland, working with the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in the Shelter & Settlement department as the focal point for training and support operations.
Esteban Leon
UN-HabitatChief Technical Advisor of the City Resilience Profiling Programme of UN-Habitat. He has a background in economics, finance, shelter/housing and settlements program design and management, capacity building, as well as building construction and reconstruction projects in post-crisis situations and urban resilience building. He has worked in the private sector (banking, microcredit and microfinance projects in Argentina and Bolivia), NGOs (slum upgrading, building constructions and reconstruction programmes in Bolivia and Kenya) and has been working for UN-Habitat since 2002 globally but based in Nairobi, Geneva, Panama and Barcelona.
Clara Irazabal
Columbia University GSAPPArchitect. Master in Architecture and Urban Design and Planning. PhD in Architecture. Former head of GSAPP's Latin Lab, she is directs the Latina/o Studies Program and is Professor of Planning in the Department of Architecture, Urban Planning + Design at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She has worked as consultant, researcher, and professor in South America, Europe, Asia and the US. She explores social justice struggles manifested in processes of transformation of urban space and how markers of minoritized identity and their intersections with one another are negatively impacted by planning processes, when the supposed mandates of planning urge respect, celebration, and nurturing of diversity.
Ebru Gencer
Columbia UniversityPh.D (2007) and MPhil from the Urban Planning Program at Columbia University. Founding Executive Director of the Center for Urban Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience (CUDRR+R), a non-profit research center based in New York City. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University; Co-Chair of the Urban Planning Advisory Group (UPAG) to the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative on Disaster Risk Reduction; and a member of the Steering Committees of the Making Cities Resilient Campaign and the Global Alliance for Urban Crises.
Gonzalo Sánchez-Terán
Jesuit Refugee Service InternationalGonzalo has worked for the last eleven years organizing, managing and implementing emergency projects in refugee and IDP camps in Guinea Conakry, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Chad and Ethiopia. He is also a regular tutor and lecturer for the International Diploma on Humanitarian Assistance at Fordham University, New York, and for the Humanitarian Cooperation Masters at Comillas University, Madrid. He has published extensively on African Geopolitics and Humanitarian Assistance through articles and books.
Gaja Maestri
Aston UniversityPolitical Sociologist and Human Geographer, PhD at Durham University (UK). Lecturer in Sociology and Policy, Aston University (Birmingham, UK). Her work addresses questions of migration and civil society organisations, with a specific attention to the urban dimension. Her recent research has focused on solidarity towards refugees in Europe and on housing access of migrants and Roma groups, with a particular interest in how political initiatives and mobilisations intersect with the making of spatial inclusion and exclusion. She has been involved with NGOs and think tanks working on racist discrimination and gender.
Rossana Poblet
Ecological Infrastructure & Nature-based solutionsAs an urban-environmental specialist with over 20 years of experience, Rosanna has been actively involved with informal urban transformation processes in contested and post-conflict regions in the Americas, Africa and Europe. As an architect and urban planner, Rossana has joined applied-research projects integrating socio-cultural-political aspects with environmental concepts like ecological infrastructure, nature-based solutions and water sensitive urban design. Her expertise focus on co-designing socio-environmental strategies to revert environmental injustices in the so-called global South. She is a visiting lecturer in different global universities, a CIM-GIZ expert and lives between Berlin and Lima.
Gonzalo Lizarralde
Université de MontrealSpecialist in planning, management and evaluation of international architecture projects. He is the holder of the Chair Fayolle-Magil Construction in architecture, construction and sustainability and also the director of the IF Research Group (grif) at the Université de Montréal, which studies the processes related to the planning and development of construction projects. He is the leader of the Disaster Resilience and Sustainable Reconstruction Research Alliance, a scientific research program funded by the Quebec research funds (FQRSC) and a founding member of i-Rec, an international network for improving post-disaster reconstruction.
Teddy Cruz
University of California San DiegoOriginally from Guatemala Teddy Cruz a Professor of Public Culture and Urbanization in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. He is known internationally for his urban research on the Tijuana/San Diego border, advancing border neighborhoods as sites of cultural production from which to rethink urban policy, affordable housing, and public space. Recipient of the Rome Prize in Architecture in 1991, his honors include representing the US in the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award in 2011, and the 2013 Architecture Award from the US Academy of Arts and Letters.
Nathaniel Corum
Sustainable Native Communities CollaborativeArchitect with degrees from Stanford and the University of Texas at Austin, Nathaniel is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and a Rose Architectural Fellowship. Previously the Head of Education Outreach at Architecture for Humanity and a Senior ECPA Fellow under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State, he is Design Director at SNCC and collaborates with international teams and tribal communities on planning and design/build projects. Author of Building a Straw Bale House, his work has featured in Architect Magazine, Humanitarian Architecture, and The New York Times.
Reena Tiwari
Curtin UniversityArchitect. Masters in Urban Design. PhD in Urban Studies. Reena is Associate Professor in the Departments of Urban & Regional Planning and Architecture at Curtin University of Technology Perth, Australia. Her expertise is in Urban Design and Urban Theory and has a global perspective and wide ranging experience on city growth and development. Reena received Australian National Award for her outstanding contribution to student learning for developing a cross-disciplinary and integrative approach to teaching urban theory and design, blurring boundaries between class room and the ‘real world’ experience.
Paul Cabrera
MSF - SpainArchitect. Master in Architecture, Urban Planning and Technologies for Developing Countries (Politecnico di Torino). Building Design and Engineering Approaches to Infection Control Course (Harvard School of Public Health). He worked an architect and urban planner in the Balkan region after the war, supported MSF’s medical projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Pakistan and Liberia and is currently a technical referent for Construction and Sheltering at the MSF Spain Headquarters. He participates actively in the emergency phase and strategic planning of reconstruction of emergencies such as the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
Fonna Forman
University of California San DiegoFonna Forman is a Professor of Political Theory and Founding Director of the Center on Global Justice at the University of California, San Diego. A theorist of ethics and public culture, her work focuses on human rights at the urban scale, climate justice in cities, and equitable urban development in the global south. She serves as Vice-Chair of the University of California Climate Solutions Group, and on the Global Citizenship Commission (advising UN policy on human rights).
Eric Cesal
ArchitectEric is a designer, writer and post-disaster expert, having led on-the-ground reconstruction programs after the Haiti earthquake, the Great East Japan Tsunami, and Superstorm Sandy. He has been called “Architecture’s First Responder” by The Daily Beast for his work leading Architecture for Humanity’s post-disaster programs from 2010 to 2014, and is currently working on his second book about how foreign and economic policies of the developed nations aggravate the conditions that lead to catastrophic disasters. He currently works as the Special Projects Director for the Curry Stone Design Prize and co-hosts Social Design Insights, a weekly podcast with the leading voices of the social design movement.
Aditya Kumar
United Nations Relief and Works AgencyAditya has a master degree in Architecture MR+D (Metropolitan Research and Design) from the Southern California Institute of Architecture, in Los Angeles. He work focuses on supporting communities living in poverty stricken slums in Southern and Eastern Africa, with a strong focus on South African slums, townships, housing and backyard communities. He has an outstanding work which comprises among others the reconstruction of Nahr El Bared Palestinian refugee camp, and is Head of the Design and Planning Unit of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Tripoli, Lebanon.
Torange Khonsari
London Metropolitan UniversityCo-Founder and Director of the art and architecture practice Public Works, an inter- disciplinary practice working on the threshold of participatory and performative art, architecture, anthropology and politics. Her projects directly impact public space, working with local organisations, communities, government bodies and stakeholders. She is course leader of the Design for Cultural Commons Masters at The Cass (London Metropolitan University). She has taught at international universities such as UMA school of architecture in Sweden, unit leader at Royal College of Art - London as well as a visiting professor at Barbican and Guildhall school of Music and Drama.
