Alain became a GPA associate in 2004 when he was working for GPA in Cambodia to prepare a housing policy study titled "Definition of a long term housing strategy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia".
He is the leading French academic and consultant on urban land and housing issues in developing countries. His PhD addressed:
"Factors and mechanisms governing the contemporary spatial growth of Bangkok”, University of Paris IV - Sorbonne.
He is Research Director at the Centre National de le Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France. He is currently working on
"Societes en Developpement dans l'Espace et dans le Temps" (SEDET) University of de Paris VII, Centre National de le Recherche Scientifique.
Alain has worked all over the world and for many international agencies. He has published widely. His latest books include:
a) Market-driven displacements and the perpetuation of informal settlements. In: The perpetuating challenge of informal settlements. Sous la direction de Marie Huchzermeyer and Aly Karam. University of Cape Town Press, South Africa , Forthcoming, December 2005;
b) Land for housing the poor in African cities. Are neo-customary processes and effective alternative to formal systems?” In: “Urban Futures: economic development and poverty reduction”. Edited by Nabeel Hamdi. ITDG Publishing, forthcoming, September 2004;
c) Cuidad y suelo. La propiedad del suelo: el debate y las perspectivas”. In: “ La cuidad Inclusiva”, Edited by M. Balbo, R. Jordan and D. Simioni D. CEPAL, Naciones Unidas, Cooperazione Italiana Santiago de Chili, 2003 pp. 105-128;
d) "Holding their Ground: Secure Land Tenure for the Urban in Developing Countries", in collaboration with Lauren Royston (Eds). 264 p., Earthscan Publications, London, March 2002;
e) "Innovative approaches to tenure for the urban poor. Current changes and trends in sub-Saharan francophone African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso and Senegal". In "land, Rights and Innovation", Geoffrey Payne (Ed.). May 2002. Intermediate Technologies, pp 114-134.
He has been a member of the UN-Habitat Advisory Board and member of the Prague Institute’s Advisory Board, Community Productivity Project.
Alain is currently working in Rwanda together with Geoff Payne on the Land Reform Process in Rwanda. Click here for a full CV.
Tony Lloyd-Jones is a Principal Lecturer in Urban Design, Planning and Sustainable Development at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment, University of Westminster. He is Director of Research and Consultancy at the Max Lock Centre, an international sustainable development research unit and co-ordinator of the Centre for Sustainable Development team. He has conducted development planning projects in the UK, Europe Asia, Africa and Latin America and published papers and articles in journals and books, worldwide.
As consulting Policy Adviser to the Department for International Development, he advised the United Kingdom Government on sustainable human settlements issues at the United Nations from 1997 to 2005 and was a member of the EU Urban Development Co-operation Expert Group and OECD/DAC Interest Group on the Urban Environment. He was international consultant to the EU Working Group on Urban Design for Sustainability and principal author of its report to the European Commission in 2004. Click here for a full CV.
Dr Graham Tipple has over 30 years experience in housing and urban development issues in developing countries at national and city level. He spent seven years working in Africa (Zambia and Ghana). He has published over a hundred papers on urban policy in Africa and the developing world in general. He is joint editor with Ken Willis of “Housing the poor in the developing world: methods of analysis, case studies and policy”, London: Routledge (1991), author of “Extending themselves: user-initiated transformation of government-built housing in developing countries”, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (2000) and co-author with Suzanne Speak of “The Hidden Millions: homelessness in developing countries (Routledge (2009).
He wrote the reports which resulted in UNCHS/ILO (1995) “Shelter provision and employment generation” and UNCHS (2000) “Strategies to combat homelessness”. He was part of the authors’ team for the Global Report on Human Settlements 2005 and lead author on the UN-Habitat/Ministry of Municipalities “State of Iraq Cities Report 2006/2007”. He has been a consultant to the World Bank, UN-Habitat, ILO, EU, DFID, CSIR (South Africa) and UK companies. Click here for a full CV.
Peter Schubeler joined as a GPA associate in 2009, although professional contacts go back to the 1990’s. With a background in architecture (University of Pennsylvania) and economics (Yale University), Peter’s more than 30 years of professional experience have focused on urban development issues in Asian and European cities, in particular: infrastructure and service provision, community participation, municipal management, institutional development and governance. He recently served as co-team leader of an international team charged with preparation of a new urban regulatory system for the city of Tirana.
Peter is based in Zurich, Switzerland, where he has for the past 20 years headed a consultancy for architecture and development planning. As long-standing consultant to the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, he has contributed to the formulation of SDC’s urban development policies and programmes. Peter’s teaching, research and consulting activities are driven by a fascination for the interactions between social and technical systems. As a practicing architect, he has conducted research on building energy systems (Swiss “Nationer Energie-Forschungs-Fond”, NEFF) and specialised in energy efficient architecture. His publications include the World Bank/Urban Management Programme’s policy paper on “participation and partnership in urban infrastructure management” and its “conceptual framework for municipal solid waste management in low-income countries. Click here for a full CV.
Brenda Murphy is a development consultant and lawyer with seven years international experience in research, law and project management. Her work focuses on urban development, land, housing, legislative and regulatory reform, aid, democracy and governance. Brenda has practised as a legal associate at leading law firms in both Johannesburg and London. She has also held research positions at the Crisis States Research Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Centre for Law, Innovation and Policy at the University of Toronto.
Brenda has conducted a research project examining the relationship between law and development in the context of formal access to land and housing possibilities for the urban poor in African cities, which was published as a working paper by the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Brenda holds a BA in sociology and law (with distinction) and an LLB (with distinction) from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She also holds an LLM from the University of Toronto and a Masters in Development Studies (with distinction) from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Click here for a full CV.
Michael became a GPA associate in August 2003. He is also a Senior Research Associate in the Global Urban Research Unit (GURU) in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, United Kingdom.
Immediately prior to this, he worked with the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG)—now Practical Action—first as the Urban Livelihoods and Shelter Programme Architect-Planner in the Eastern Africa regional office in Kenya, and then as an International Projects Manager in the Head Office in Rugby, UK. Before joining ITDG, he worked as a Research Fellow (Architect-Planner) in the Housing and Building Research Institute (HABRI) of the University of Nairobi.
A holder of a Bachelors degree in Architecture and a Masters degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Nairobi, and a PhD from Newcastle University, he has over 20 years of international experience in housing and urban development in developing countries. Work has included research and development and promotion of alternative building materials and construction technologies; integrated urban housing development and slum upgrading projects, reviews of regulatory frameworks for urban upgrading and pro-poor slum upgrading frameworks; housing policy reviews; and training and capacity building projects in several countries. He has been involved in and managed several international research projects funded by DFID focusing on improving the housing conditions of the urban poor and reducing urban poverty. Recent work has included “Strengthening the Urban Sector through Building Capacities in Municipal Planning and Management”, which included the writing of the State of Iraqi Cities Report for UN-HABITAT.
He is the co-author with Geoffrey Payne of The Urban Housing Manual: Making Regulatory Frameworks Work for the Poor; with Nabeel Hamdi of Partnerships in Urban Planning: A Guide for Municipalities.
Evelyn became a GPA associate in November 2002. She was born in Wolverhampton, England in 1977 but spent much of her childhood living in Spain. She has always been interested in cultures and societies around the world, and had her first experience of working abroad at the age of 18 in Mexico where she worked with children of prisoners and street children.
She then studied Social Anthropology at London School of Economics and went on to do a Masters in Gender and International Development at the same university, from which she graduated with a distinction in 2001. Her research interests are gender, rural-urban linkages and development, land tenure and property rights, and migration.
Since working at GPA she has assisted in managing a number of GPA projects, including the most recent DFID funded projects - 'Progress in the Provision of Secure Tenure for the Urban Poor' and 'Regulatory Guidelines for Affordable Shelter'. Most recently she edited the CD-Rom accompanying the forthcoming 'Urban Housing Manual' and wrote the methods and resources section.
Evelyn has helped organise an international workshop on regulatory guidelines for affordable shelter, liaised with research partners in many different countries, managed the GPA website and prepared a number of project proposals. She has attended and contributed to a number of conferences and workshops, including the 'Removing Unfreedoms' meeting at the LSE to discuss the work of Amartya Sen and the Stakeholders Forum conference on monitoring the Millennium Development Goals.
Hamish Stewart became a GPA associate in March of 2010. Since joining GPA six months ago as a research assistant, he has assisted in managing a number of projects, including research on the Dharavi Redevelopment Authority's plans for Mumbai. Most recently he has helped edit the forthcoming UN-Habitat National Housing Strategy for Uganda as well as assisting with work on a draft Iraq National Housing Policy and preparations for WUF5 in Rio de Jainero. Having lived and worked in Africa and China, he is interested in exploring emerging urban networks in East and West Africa as drivers of economic growth and development. He will begin doctoral studies in October at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Prior to moving to London, Hamish has worked on consulting projects with Sudanese refugees in Cairo, and helped to draft the Agha Khan Foundation of Canada's environmental guidelines for small business project financing in East Africa and South Asia. He has also spent time as a factory inspector in Southern China and is excited about watching Chinese cities decarbonise their economies. Click here for a full CV.