The University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning

Dr Naseem Ahmadpour is a researcher in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). She is a member of the Design Lab and leads Affective Interactions research group. She was awarded her PhD in human-machine interaction from University of Montreal (Ecole Polytechnique), Canada and her MSc in industrial design (specialized in human factors) from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Her research explores and critiques new imaginaries in the future of care and work, by questioning ethical approaches to and consequences of sociotechnical systems that increasingly shape those futures. In the past five years, Dr Ahmadpour has investigated platformization of care through immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR) usinga multi-perspective participatory approach.

Professor Tooran Alizadeh is an intersectional feminist from the Global Majority - born, raised, educated, and practised in Southern cities as a built environment professional. She, nevertheless, acknowledges two decades of living, studying, and working on the unceded lands of the First Nations people in Australia. Her ongoing research spans smart urbanism, digital geographies, infrastructure, and Southern urbanism.

Tooran has an established track record on the equity implications of telecommunication infrastructure in Australia, as the first academic who demonstrated the ups and downs of the National Broadband Network (NBN) with attention to the spatial patterns of the mixed-technology NBN rollout. More recently, however, she has advanced an intersectoral approach towards infrastructure arguing for an integrated public-led infrastructure governance in Australia and beyond - laying the foundation for mutually respectful coexistence of the Western urban planning governance and Indigenous governance. This distinct line of inquiry builds solidarity with Indigenous sovereignties while making significant contribution to urban studies.

A second prominent research trajectory focuses on the global trends of smart urbanism from a 'Southern urban critique' - defining 'South' not as a location, but as a power relation that has long been used to silence and sideline. In this line of inquiry, Tooran has increasingly adopted an intersectional feminist lens to investigate the socio-spatial implications of smart city development and unfolding digital geographies in India - as part of a broader research agenda 'the right to the smart city in the Global South' to 1) 'expose' in the sense of analysing and articulating the roots of smart city shortcomings; 2) 'propose' in the sense of working with those affected or excluded to construct normative alternative visions for 'just smart city'; and 3) 'politicise' in the sense of clarifying the political implications of what is exposed and proposed, and supporting, organising, and mobilising around the alternative visions.

Tooran's research is supported by a variety of funding sources (including an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship), has resulted in over 100 refereed publications, and made meaningful contribution to the public discourse around the urban and equity implications of infrastructure development in Australia and beyond - evidenced by numerous prime time TV and radio interviews, and hundreds of quotations in the print media. She is also the Associate Editor of Telematics and Informatics - an interdisciplinary high impact journal on the social impacts of new technologies. Tooran was the co-convener of Smart Urbanism (Research) Lab at the University of Sydney (2021-2025), the lead investigator on the Infrastructure Governance Incubator (2020-2024) funded by the Henry Halloran Research Trust, and a recipient of the prestigious Research Accelerator (SOAR) Fellowship at the University of Sydney (2019 and 2020).

Dr Ross Anderson is an Associate Professor of architecture at the University of Sydney. Having practiced as an architect in the offices of Daniel Libeskind and Zvi Hecker, both in Berlin, he moved to Cambridge to complete his PhD dissertation 'From the Bauhütte to the Bauhaus' under Peter Carl's supervision. His research on modern European architecture, aesthetics and philosophy, has been published in various journals including AA Files,The Bauhaus Annual, Architectural Histories, Drawing Matter Journal and Art Bulletin. His co-edited book 'Modern Architecture and the Sacred' was published by Bloomsbury in 2020, and his major monograph 'The Appian Way: Adolphe Appia and the Scenography of Modern Architecture' was published by Park Books in 2025.

Professor Thomas Astell-Burt is Professor of Cities and Planetary Health and Founding Director of the Centre for Flourishing Cities at the University of Sydney. Thomas is ranked first out of over 10,000 scientists globally for his research on nature and health. He is a Clarivate Top 1% Highly Cited Researcher for three consecutive years and is listed in the Stanford-Elsevier Top 2% scientists worldwide. An Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow, he leads major national research programs exploring how nature-based interventions and urban design can help to address depression, diabetes, and dementia. As Co-Director of the Population Wellbeing and Environment Research Lab (PowerLab), Thomas' work has informed urban greening strategies in Sydney, across Australia, and in hundreds of cities worldwide.

Professor Deborah Ascher Barnstone is professor and head of architecture at The University of Sydney.  She is both an architectural historian and a registered architect in North Rhine, Westfalia, Germany. She holds a B. A. degree cum laude with High Honors from Barnard College, Columbia University; M. Arch degree from Columbia University; and PhD from Delft University of Technology. She has held academic positions at University of Technology Sydney, Washington State University, Ball State University, Fachhochschule Cologne, and the Boston Architectural Center.

Barnstone's primary research interest is in 20th century early modern art, architecture, and culture.  She has a particular passion for dismantling historical myths by re-examining received histories in order to uncover alternate interpretations of the past.  Much of her research has focused on art and architecture in Germany during the interwar period because Germany was an important site of early modern innovation. Beyond the Bauhaus: Cultural Modernity in Breslau, 1918 - 1933 describes the largely forgotten but richly innovative cultural scene in the former German city of Breslau (Wroclaw today).  Studies of the influence of Weimar culture on early modernism have focused almost exclusively on Berlin and the Dessau Bauhaus but advances in Bresalu affected nearly every creative and intellectural field. The Break with the Past: Avant-Garde Architecture in Germany, 1910 - 1925 interrogates the myth that early modern practitioners dispelled with all aspects of traditional and historic aesthetics. The Color of Modernism: Paints, Pigments and the Transformation of Modern Architecture in 1920s Germany similarly unpacks, and disproves, the pervasive myth that early modern architecture was white.  Scholarly collections that she has edited deal with similar themes: Modernist Aesthetics in Transition: Visual Culture of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany argues for the complexity and shifting nature of aesthetics, rather than clear categories. Barnstone has recently begun work on Australian architecture of the interwar period.

As a registered architect and practiitioner, Barnstone also has a long-standing interest in sutainability in architectural design.  She still runs a small practice in Sydney working primarily on single-family homes and custom furniture.  She worked for German architect, Erich Schneider-Wessling, a pioneer in sustainable architecture. She has worked on projects looking at novel ways of recycling materials, designing with new sustainable materials like plastic wood composites, and experimenting with passive heating and cooling.

She is co-commissioning editor of the Visual Culture in German Contexts Series at Bloomsbury Academic, chair of the Modernism Collaborative in Australia and New Zealand, and Australian Representative to the International Union of Architects. 

MArch, MEng, PhD Building Physics and Systems, GradCert Higher Education.

Sandy Burgoyne is a smart city practitioner and Lecturer in Urbanism at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. As an early-career researcher, her work has investigated emerging multi-actor governance practices to deliver smart and innovative cities in Australia and overseas.  Her research continues to examine the intersection of urban governance, digital infrastructures and equity, and seeks to inform policy-makers and practitioners in planning for digitally equitable cities.

Dr Densil Cabrera is an Associate Professor in audio and acoustics in the Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney. He did his PhD in psychoacoustics at the University of Sydney. Earlier degrees include a Master of Arts (University of Technology, Sydney), Graduate Diploma in Communication (University of Technology, Sydney) and Bachelor of Music (University of Sydney).

Current research projects are in architectural acoustics, including open-plan office acoustics, acoustics of prisons, and acoustic reflector design. He has been involved in consulting projects in areas such as acoustics education, auditory display design, building acoustics and auditorium acoustics. Dr Cabrera's main teaching is in the areas of architectural and audio acoustics, acoustic measurements, audio systems, psychoacoustics and auditory display. 

BA Hons (Melbourne), PhD (Melbourne)

Professor Marcus Carter is a researcher in human-computer interaction, focusing on games, virtual reality and emerging technologies, where he founded the Sydney Games and Play Lab at the University of Sydney. He holds an ARC Future Fellowship examining the monetisation of children in the digital games industry, and was named the top researcher in Human-Computer Interaction in Australia by The Australian in 2021. He is a recipient of the DiGRA Australia Distinguished Scholar Award, recognising his sustained contribution to the games research community in Australia.

Marcus is a co-founder of Ludolio, an educational games distribution platform developed at the University of Sydney that makes commercial video games accessible for university courses, libraries, and researchers. Ludolio grew out of two converging streams of work: research co-designing curriculum for teaching with commercial games in schools (where technology access was a persistent barrier), and a long-running investigation into the financialisation of the games industry through his ARC Future Fellowship. Learn more about Ludolio at https://www.ludolio.com/ludolio-story.

He is previously the President of the Digital Games Research Association of Australia, and co-chaired the 2017 DiGRA International conference, the largest international conference in game studies.

His books include Game Studies: A Critical Introduction to the Field (Polity, 2025, with Keogh and Butt), a textbook that reflects his long-standing commitment to teaching games as a serious field of scholarly inquiry. His other books include Treacherous Play (MIT Press, 2022); Fantasies of Virtual Reality (MIT Press, 2024, with Egliston); Governing Social Virtual Reality (Springer Nature, 2024, with Gray and Egliston). His next book is The Limits of Immersion: Disability and Virtual Reality (Bristol University Press, forthcoming November 2026).

Lucila’s research interests are at the intersection of design, education, and digital technologies. Her research explores how social structures shape the design and use of technologies, and how technology influences cultural, educational and social experiences. Lucila is interested in the ways that design knowledge can support teachers and students to develop the capability and skills they need in our rapidly changing world. Key themes in Lucila’s research include:

• Nature of knowledge; sociomateriality; postdigital; teaching and learning with new technology
• Design for learning; innovative learning spaces; networked learning in museums, libraries, higher education, schools, AI in education.
• Methods and tools for the analysis and design of complex learning environments.

Prior to joining the University of Sydney, Lucila was an associate professor in digital education in the Institute of Education (2017-2026) at Massey University (Auckland), New Zealand, where she also served as co-director of the Equity Through Education Research Centre (2021-2025). 

Lucila co-edited the following books: Postdigital Learning Spaces: Towards Convivial, Equitable and Sustainable Spaces for Learning (with James Lamb, Springer 2024),  Place-Based Spaces for Networked Learning (with Peter Goodyear and Maarten de Laat, Routledge 2017) and The Architecture of Productive Learning Networks (with Peter Goodyear, Routledge 2014). 

Alexandra is a lecturer in interaction design. They are a design researcher, educator, & dabbler with tech. Their doctoral research explored how queer and cyberfeminist approaches can be used when designing embodied experiences in virtual reality; as part of this research, Alexandra produced the VR experience Body Traces Archive (2024). They are interested in using design research, practice-based exploration and deep engagement with critical theory to explore, understand and reshape designing for digital media. 

Alexandra also collaborates with contemporary Australian artists on projects such as Habit Habit by Kalanjay Dhir (2022).

Dr Claire Daniel has a background in urban planning, urban data science and technology. Their research concerns how digital technolgies are used in urban planning practice, and the broader implications for wider systems of urban governance and the outcomes for cities and places.

Claire is currently undertaking postdoctoral research on a project titled "Governing the City in the Age of AI" with Dr Sophia Maalson, Professor Pauline McGuirk and Professor Robyn Dowling.

A Balanggarra woman from the East Kimberley and descendant of Captain William Bligh, Elle Davidson (pictured with her parents above) describes herself as being caught in the cross-winds of Australia’s history. With a passion to empower the voices of First People, Elle combines her Town Planning and Indigenous Engagement qualifications to navigate between two worlds. She understands the importance of deep listening and building a strong platform of trust for working together with the community. Elle uses her planning and engagement skills to facilitate a co-design process that leads to culturally informed outcomes. Ultimately she aims to create a space for reviving and enabling culture to exist in a contemporary society.

Growing up in Northern NSW with environmentally aware and culturally strong parents, including a stepfather who was a former Byron Shire councillor, Elle knew that she wanted to dedicate her career to sustainable outcomes. She studied a Bachelor of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Queensland and completed an honours thesis focused on the impact of western planning on Aboriginal communities.

Elle worked with various Local Governments for seven years building experience in development assessment, strategic planning and policy, urban design and engagement. To diversify her skill set and focus on community outcomes, Elle then moved into a stakeholder engagement and social sustainability role in a large consulting firm. She was then offered the opportunity to develop and implement two Reconciliation Action Plans to outline how the organisation could contribute to reconciliation through their projects and operations. Within the organisation, Elle created an Indigenous Engagement service offering to clients, which then led to her winning and leading a variety of projects.

In 2020, Elle started a new role as an Aboriginal Planning Lecturer at the University of Sydney with the School of Architecture, Design and Planning. This has provided an exciting opportunity to educate future practitioners to help design and shape our places and spaces ensuring they are informed about cultural considerations. She will also be undertaking a PhD, focused on developing a toolkit for First Peoples community planning and design.

Beau de Belle is a Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Design, whose practice is grounded in a
lifelong commitment to making, designing, and constructing. Beginning as an apprentice carpenter
and later working as a builder, Beau's journey into architecture was catalysed by a moment on a
residential construction site, where poor design failed to respond to Country-igniting a
responsibility to protect her through culturally respectful design.

A proud Gomeroi and Gamilaraay man, Beau works at the intersection of First Nations Knowledges,
relational pedagogy, and Country-centred design. His practice and teaching draw on Yarning as a
method, prioritising listening, respect, and responsibility. Guided by Cultural Mentors, Elders, and
Community, he carries an obligation to create space for future First Nations architects, makers, and
researchers, and to support non-Indigenous counterparts to engage respectfully and meaningfully.

Beau's research focuses on First Nations architectural expression, community-led design, and the
integration of cultural protocols and spiritual knowledge into built environment processes. His
PhD-the first practice-based doctorate by a First Nations man in Architecture-argues against
universalised frameworks in favour of place-based, culturally-led processes grounded in relational
accountability.

As a maker, Beau works across timber, digital fabrication, and handcrafted artefacts. His creative
practice honours the spiritual imprint left through making, forging deep connections between
maker, material, and Country. His Message Stick-created as part of his doctorate-embeds story,
lore, and knowledges into a single artefact, illustrating the enduring relationship between people,
place, and practice.

In all aspects of his work, Beau advocates for design processes that centre Country, value First
Nations wisdoms, and foster just and sustainable futures.

Over the last 35 years, Professor Richard de Dear has focused his research career on defining what occupants want and need from their built environments, and assessing the performance of buildings in terms of meeting those requirements. He is currently the most highly cited living researcher in the domain of thermal comfort, with over 250 peer-reviewed papers plus several monographs on the subject. Within that body of research it is his adaptive model of thermal comfort that’s had the greatest impact, not just on the research community but also on the design and operation of actual buildings. De Dear's adaptive model underpins the American Society of Heating and the Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers’ thermal comfort standard, ASHRAE 55-2004, 2010, 2013, which in turn, informs several national thermal comfort standards around the world.

The adaptive model’s positive reception in both research and practice arenas can best be explained against the backdrop of global climate change. In meeting the needs of their occupants buildings must mitigate their deleterious impacts on environment wherever possible, but also adapt to the climate change that is already “locked-in.” These are global concerns, but nowhere are they more pressing than in the newly industrialised BRIC economies where the intensity of construction activity is greatest. For this reason de Dear’s collaborative research network has included increasing numbers of East and South Asian, and South America researcher groups in recent years.

Prof De Dear’s academic career has included appointments around the world, including the Technical University of Denmark, National University of Singapore, Macquarie University, and since 2009, The University of Sydney where he is the inaugural Director of the Indoor Environmental Quality Lab. De Dear is also currently serving as an editor for Energy and Buildings, Indoor Air, and ASHRAE’s archival research journal, Science and Technology for the Built Environment. De Dear also served on the Australian Government’s Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) panel dealing with architecture and the built environment for the 2015 round.

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Visiting and Adjunct Professorships

Center for the Built Environment, University of California at Berkeley, USA (since 1992).


Department of Building Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing China (since 2012).

Centre for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India (since 2011).

Department of Building Thermal Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin China (since 2016).

Center for Indoor Environment and Energy, Technical University of Denmark (August 2000-January 2001).


College of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUT), Tongji University, Shanghai China (Since 2013).

School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin China (since 2013).

School of Architecture and Environment, Sichuan University, Chengdu China (since 2015).

School of Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai China (since 2015).

College of Human Ecology, Yonsei University, Seoul Korea (since 2005).

Faculty of Science, Macquarie University, Sydney Australia (since 2010).


School of Architecture and Building, Deakin University, Geelong Australia (2001-2004).

B.Arch, M.S by Research, PhD

Chirag Deb is a Senior Lecturer in Building Science at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney. His work and interests span across the fields of energy in buildings and cities, building sensing technology, indoor environmental quality, time series analysis, and data-driven energy modelling. Chirag received his PhD from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2017 for which he was awarded the President's Graduate Fellowship. He holds a bachelor's degree in Architecture from NIT Trichy where he was awarded the institute gold medal. He also holds a M.S. (by research) degree in Civil Engineering from IIT Madras. Chirag was a postdoc in the Chair of Architecture and Building Systems at ETH Zurich, Switzerland from 2017 to 2021 and was involved in the International Energy Agency's EBC Annex-71 project. Before moving to Sydney in 2023, he worked as an Assistant Professor in the Centre for Urban Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay in Mumbai where he established the Data & Energy in Buildings & Cities laboratory (DebCLab) and was the receiver of the Young Faculty Award 2021. He serves as the Early Career Board Member for the Energy and Buildings journal, a review editor for the Frontiers in Built Environment and Frontiers in Sustainable Cities journals and technical committee member for key conferences such as Building Simulation, BuildSys, Healthy Buildings and Indoor Air. 

Dr Lauren Del Rosario is a human geographer who is passionate about using GIS and spatial analysis to advance cities research and population health. Her research focuses on analysing how built and natural environments can influence urban mobility and are related to socioeconomic disadvantage, with novel ways to measure travel times and physical activity. Her current research interests include socioeconomic inequalities in green and blue space and urban mobility measured using GPS and activity spaces.

Dr Udiana Puspa Dewi is a Research Fellow at the University of Sydney node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society (ADM+S). She works on Language and Cultural Diversity in ADM: Australia in the Asia Pacific. Her current research focuses on the experiences of working holiday visa holders in Australia, examining how their interaction with social media and AI platforms shape their mobility, labour conditions, and everyday lives. This work expands her research scope into migration, multiculturalism, and diaspora, especially in the context of Australia's changing social and technological landscape.

Before joining ADM+S, Dr Dewi co-directed the Communicating Flooding Project (CFP) at the University of Queensland. She managed interdisciplinary collaborations focused on improving environmental communication in Indonesian coastal communities affected by tidal flooding. The project focuses on partnerships with impacted communities, governments, and universities in both Australia and Indonesia.

Dr Dewi's broader research interests sit at the intersection of language ideology, media, migration, environmental narratives, and social transformation. Drawing on her training in linguistic anthropology, she investigates how policy, narratives, and community practices are entangled with language and culture. She is committed to research translation and community engagement, particularly in amplifying the voices of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) groups and building equitable frameworks for knowledge production, circulation, and policy influence.

Dr Jason A. Dibbs

Lecturer in Architecture,

Program Director, B.Des.Arch.

Associate Editor, Architectural Theory Review