Building and Urban Design in Development MSc alumni experiences
Explore the experiences and career paths of our Building and Urban Design in Development MSc graduates.
Building and Urban Design in Development MSc enhances students’ skills in critical thinking, action-research, spatial analysis, design research and creative practice, which are in demand in a variety of sectors around the world. Our alumni have now launched careers across NGOs, aid and development agencies, social movements, community-led organisations, government organisations, urban think tanks, public agencies and institutions, architectural, planning and urban design practices, and more. Our course has also often inspired graduates to pursue further research at PhD level and to develop independent practices.
Provided with the analytical tools, I was committed to understand my previous work experience in participatory design with rural communities in the Andes and in the Amazon forest. I was able to apply decolonial and participation theory to better understand my own practice and to question our strategies and perspectives.

Jessica Alvarez
Read more about Jessica's ExperienceThroughout this masters I worked with a diverse range of disciplines, scales, actors and media that highlighted to me the importance of the ‘bigger picture’; the importance of being able to deconstruct processes of development, through the evaluation and analysis of both their measurable and non-measurable impacts, and then piece them back together to implement in the built environment.

Luisa Miranda Morel
Read more about Luisa's ExperienceAlumni in practice
We have a dedicated website exploring stories from our alumni in practice. This website is conceived as an open-ended research project, enquiring what practice of/in the built environment means nowadays. The enquiry feeds on the words and perspectives of alumni of the Building and Urban Design in Development MSc, who we interview to discuss recent projects of theirs.
Explore the interviews on:
Watch alumni career stories
Lucy and Akil shared their career journeys after graduating, as part of The Bartlett Development Planning Unit’s alumni career stories video playlist on YouTube.
Explore more alumni stories
- Jessica Alvarez
- Aurélie Knecht
- Nada Elfeituri
- Bobae Lee
- Aamina Shahid
- Aji Bima Amriza Amalsyah
- Samia Khan
- Shannon Lawrence
- Shoko Sakuma
- Juan Usubillaga
- Edwar Hanna
- Belen Desmaison
- Jessica Mamo
- David McEwen
- Alberto Piccioli and Kaiting Chang
- Riccardo Conti, Joana Dabaj and Laura Antona
- Luisa Miranda Morel
- Lucia Maffei
- Nathan Mahaffey
- Francesco Pasta
- Sepideh Hajisoltani
- Katja Starc
- Josue Robles Caraballo
- Jose di Girolamo
- Jennifer Cirne
- Krista Canellakis and Marisol Garcia
- Igor Malgrati
- Andrew Wade
- Benjamin Leclair
- Kelvin Naidoo
- Diego Collazos
- Katja Schäfer