The DPU welcomes two new 'Honorary Professors' after titles granted by UCL

Prof Caroline Moser teaches on the MPhil/PhD Programme while Prof Carolyn Stephens teaches on the new MSc Health in Urban Development. 

Prof Caroline Moser

Prof Caroline Moser is an urban social anthropologist/social policy specialist with more than forty years’ experience in urban social development in academic research and teaching, in training and evaluation, and as an international bureaucrat. She started as a lecturer at the DPU (1978-1986) where she first developed gender planning. She then lectured at the LSE and later at the New School, New York. Between 1990-2000 she was at the World Bank, where she led a team that researched the impact of structural adjustment on the urban poor in Metro Manila, Lusaka, Budapest and Guayaquil. She was based first in the Urban Division, and then as Lead Specialist for Social Development in Latin America and worked in policy think-tanks, the Overseas Development Institute, London, and Brookings Institution, Washington. From 2007 -2012 she was Professor of Urban Development and Director of the Global Urban Research Centre at the University of Manchester, becoming an Emeritus Professor. Recent advisory work has included Comic Relief, ICRC, IDRC, Ford Foundation and Swedish Research Council.   

Alongside her lengthy urban experience, of particular relevance to Caroline's appointment at the DPU, is her urban research and associated methodology. Completed research includes a 40-year longitudinal study of a Guayaquil, Ecuador human settlement, on asset accumulation and poverty reduction, culminating in 2019 in a documentary film, Calle K. In addition, she has led two projects on climate change asset adaptation; in Mombasa and Nicaragua, that included being the PI for a World Bank Economic and Sector Work on climate change in cities of the South; in Cartagena and Pondicherry, and recently in Tegucigalpa, where she was research advisor. She has also directed three research projects on urban violence in Jamaica, in nine cities in Colombia and Guatemala, and on the ‘tipping points of urban violence’ in Santiago, East Timor, Nairobi and Patna. Recent research projects have used participatory methodology, with local researcher capacity building in eight Global South countries.    

She has contributed to the DPU particularly through teaching on the PhD Programme, with two lecture seminars on research methodology annually since 2013; as well as on the  MSc BUDD  programme with a three hour session on reflexivity and ethics of fieldwork prior to the first fieldtrip. She has also contributed to the DPU in various other ways. This has included a Keynote Speech for the KNOW Programme Dialogues in Inequality in 2019; acting as a Reviewer for the REF submission process, and as a PhD external examiner. The UK premier of Calle K was held at the DPU in January 2020, with an audience of 150 people, and I will be a commentator at an upcoming screening of a Peruvian urban documentary film.

Prof Carolyn Stephens

Prof Carolyn Stephens has worked with the DPU since 1994, both in a teaching capacity in London and Argentina, and as an examiner on the PhD programme.  She is now working closely with the newly launched MSc Health in Urban Development, and teaching on both the Health, Social Justice and the City Module and the Urban Health and Development Planning Strategies Module of the new programme. She is also acting as International Advisor to the DPU Wellcome Trust project: Gaza the socio-politics of health, death and life. 

Carolyn has degrees from Cambridge University (BA and MA), and from London University (MSc and PhD). Her research career of over 25 years has focused principally on links of urban equity, environment and health, and on social and environmental justice for disadvantaged communities internationally. She has lived and worked in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and has advised international UN agencies, including WHO, UNEP, UNDP, UNICEF, UNHabitat. Her research supports NGO groups across the world, and have served on the executive boards of the International Association of Ecology and Health (IAEH), and the pan European NGO Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL). 

Carolyn was Reader/Professor of Ecology and Global Health at the LSHTM until 2012, and Honorary Full Professor of the UCL Institute of Health Equity in London from 2012-2018. She is a Fellow (by distinction) of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians and International Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, and is the winner of the Royal Society Kohn Award for Excellence in Engagement of the Public in Science, and the Mayor of London Academic Excellence Award in public engagement. She has held Visiting Professorships in the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina (1999 to date)  and the Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil (2002 to 2005).