8th DPU60th Anniversary PhD scholarship awarded to Mariajosé Nieto

In 2014, the DPU celebrated 60 years of education, training, research, consultancy and knowledge sharing in urban and regional development policy and planning in the Global South. Coinciding with the 60th anniversary year, the DPU PhD scholarship scheme was launched. To date we have had 7 recipients: Monica Bernal Llanos, 2014; Don Brown, 2015; Harsh Jatkar, 2016; Andrew Knight, 2017; Jing Zhang, 2017 (half-tuition scholarship recipient); Carmen Abouamra, 2018; Tin Alvarez, 2018. For 2019 we had 15 applicants who met the eligibility criteria, 6 of whom were shortlisted and interviewed, with Mariajosé being the recipient. The scholarship covers tuition fees and a living stipend for a period of 3 years. 

Mariajosé intends to study how informal and grass-roots transport alternatives are reconfiguring the mobility of people living in urban areas of Bogotá marked by limited coverage of public transport. The objective is to guide decision-making and advance conceptual and methodological frameworks to analyse the impact of transport services on peoples’ capacity to be mobile and consequently on their socio-spatial marginalization.

Mariajosé Nieto is an economist by training with MSc in Development from the National University of Colombia and MSc Environmental Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics. She brings experience in policy making with local and national government and the UN to her studies. She has worked as a civil servant in Bogotá’s local government in the Economic and Social Development office. She has specialized in information management and data analysis for urban development. As a researcher and lecturer in environmental economics and urban sustainable development in cities in Latin American and the Caribbean and in China, she has developed resources to support local governments and public institutions in decision-making processes while collaborating with a diverse set of stakeholders.