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Postgraduate Research (PhD)

Department of Architecture and Built Environment

Staff research interests for potential PhD students

For general information and entry requirements on pursuing PhD studies at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, please contact the ABE PhD Studies Programme Leader, Seraphim Alvanides

For discussing your research proposal, please contact the member of staff closest to your research interests with a draft title, background, aims, objectives, methods and timeline of your project. We welcome contact by potential PhD students with interests in the topics below.

Academic Staff

Research Interests

Seraphim Alvanides

ABE PhD Studies Programme Leader
  • Built environment effects on public behaviour and health.
  • Population data analysis, urban sprawl and sustainability.
  • Active travel uptake: walking, cycling, public transport.
  • GI Systems/Science; Big/Open Data; Spatial Data Science.
Zaid Alwan  
  • BIM and low carbon appraisals
  • Engineering sustainability and green building benchmarks
  • Building performance evaluations
  • Building assessment expertise
James Charlton
  • City planning, urban design and public participation
  • Building Information Modelling (BIM) including heritage BIM
  • Digital Communication (Inc. Virtual / Augmented Reality)
  • Digital tools, such as laser scanning and virtual city models

Ruth Conroy Dalton

  • Spatial cognition and space syntax
  • Creativity and design processes
  • Phenomenology and experience
  • Virtual environments
Bob Giddings
  • Architectural design methodologies and design quality
  • House design and the development of communities
  • Post-city structuring approach to urban design
  • Future of the city centre
Kanchana Ginige
  • Disaster risk reduction in the built environment (non-technological measures)
  • Optimising risk transfer and risk sharing through construction contracts
Paul Greenhalgh
  • Real estate economics, commercial property, and spatial analysis of markets
  • Regeneration, planning and real estate development
  • Financialisation of real estate assets and business rates data modelling
  • Property vacancy and adaptive reuse
Peter Holgate  
  • Creative re-use, craftsmanship and tradition
  • Place identity
  • Architecture and health
  • Architectural education
Oliver Jones
  • Architectural/environmental psychology
  • Human experience in virtual environments
  • Human-environment interaction
  • Digital technologies and the urban environment
Paul Jones  
  • Creativity and design process
  • Architecture and well-being 
  • Architecture and prefabrication
Lesley McIntyre
  • Human Building Interaction (HBI), spatial cognition and user experience
  • Participatory engagement methods (across age, impairment and disability); well-being, enablement and social inclusion
  • Human interaction within buildings across different contexts, typologies and scales.
Kevin Muldoon-Smith
  • Urban financialisation: business rate retention, tax increment finance, accelerated development zones and methods of property taxation
  • Property markets and economic development
  • Urban adaptation and the future city
  • Real Estate Modelling: Big/open data, dark data, urban analytics, GISc
Rosie Parnell
  • Children’s spaces, children’s experiences of built environment
  • Participatory design, design and creative process, play, designing with children
  • Architectural/built environment education, spatial literacy
  • Learning, pedagogy, space: learning environments, school design
Giovanni Pesce
  • Lime and cementitious binders for construction;
  • Nanomaterials and waste utilisation in construction;
  • PHREEQC for modelling chemical reactions and processes in construction materials;
  • Development of smart sensors for monitoring degradation processes in historic buildings
Kyung Wook Seo  
  • Housing form and culture: vernacular and modern dwellings and their transformation
  • Open Building: Design and investigation of flexible and modular homes, and building components
  • Space Syntax: Morphological analysis of urban fabric, building forms and interior layouts
  • Environmental Behaviour: Human cognition and interaction with built environment
 Ayse Ozbil Torun  
  • Space syntax
  • Walkability
  • Urban form
  • Built environment and public health
 Ernest Ameyaw  
  • Public-private partnerships (PPPs) for infrastructure and services delivery (incl. Smart PPPs)
  • Construction business: Risk management strategies and practices of construction contractor organisations
  • Corruption and ethical issues in infrastructure procurement
  • Sustainable construction - carbon management and green building technologies in construction
  • Construction informatics (e.g. BIM / digital technologies) and their impact on project performance
 

Zahirah Mokhtar Azizi

 
  • Soft Cost Elements (SCE) and its impact on sustainable development
  • Decision-making for sustainability 
  • Economic sustainability in the built environment
  • Sustainable cities and communities
 

 

Gayan Wedawatta 

   
  • Procurement in the construction industry (with special emphasis on collaborative approaches to procurement)
  • Cost and contract management in construction
  • Disaster resilience in the built environment (especially flood adaptation)
  • Post-disaster re-construction and recovery
  • Construction 4.0 for disaster resilience
 

Kishor Zingre

   
  • Designing low carbon buildings using bio-inspired concepts
  • Building energy modelling, simulations and analysis
  • Formulation of heat transfer models for energy-efficient envelope surfaces
  • Building Information Modelling
  • Intelligent building automation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Banner Image: (c)S.Alvanides@Northumbria.ac.uk

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