The ever-growing influx of people and resources into cities across the globe is generating significant challenges. Our Cities, Governance and Sustainability group engages in research at the interface between the built environment, lived experience and governance structures in support of addressing these challenges.
Simultaneously, the concentration of an assortment of people and ways of being provides hope for cities as spaces where ideas to address the challenges of equity, sustainability and balanced development can be derived. Critical in this transition is the role of city-regional governance. Our research group and our international collaborators focus on understanding, developing new approaches, and engaging with policy related to city-regional and neighbourhood development; wellbeing in local economies; societal health; urban policy, practice and institutional structures; and the relationships between city-regions and other settlement types.
We seek to not just investigate and understand key urban issues, but to support activism and engage with a diversity of stakeholders to share new thinking and ultimately support the emergence of more sustainable and equitable cities and communities.
Research Team
Our academic research team comprises faculty and researchers at University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, University of Galway and Maynooth University collaborating with academic colleagues, civil society groups and policymakers across the island of Ireland, the UK, North America and beyond. We work on funded projects as well as exploring topics of academic significance and public interest.
Research group leader, UCD
Prof Niamh Moore-Cherry
Research Fellow
Dr Dean Phelan
Project manager
Dr Rachel McArdle
PhD candidate, UCD
Zikang Ji
PhD Candidate, UCD
Ruodi Yang
Assistant Professor, Maynooth University
Dr Carla Kayanan
Lecturer in Education for Sustainable Development
Dr Alma Clavin
Research intern
Dinar Syaharani
Research intern
Lucile Damien
Research intern