Dr Catalina Ortiz Appointed New Director for UCL Urban Laboratory

Following a rigorous selection process, Dr Catalina Ortiz will join UCL Urban Lab as Director, effective June 2024. She succeeds Professor Clare Melhuish, who has served a six-year tenure as Director since May 2018.  

Catalina joined UCL in 2015 and is an Associate Professor in The Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU). She has been a committed contributor to the Urban Lab network for many years, having helped develop the Global Urbanism MASc programme, for which she is a teaching contributor, and having been a member of the lab’s Steering Committee since 2021.  

Catalina is an urbanist who is passionate about spatial justice. Her research uses decolonial and critical urban theory through knowledge co-production methodologies to study the politics of space production to foster more just cities and the recognition of multiple urban knowledges. Her work revolves around critical urban pedagogies, planning for equality, and southern urbanisms. As an educator, she is committed to an ethics of care and an engaged scholarship to trigger radical spatial imagination for a negotiated co-production of space. 

Prof Christoph Lindner, Dean of The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, commented on the appointment:

On her appointment, Dr Catalina Ortiz said:

Prof Clare Melhuish, the current UCL Urban Laboratory Director said:

Catalina will divide her time between the Urban Lab and DPU in the spirit of Urban Lab’s remit to foster collaboration and partnership between urbanists in different departments and faculties at UCL.

More information

• Visit Dr Catalina Ortiz’s profile 

Image: Skivalos Photographia