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People

Meet the Executive Group, and research, professional services and governance staff of LSE Cities.

Executive Group

Centre Staff

  • Nathaniel Gore 200x200

    Nathaniel Gore

    Programme Administrator, Bloomberg LSE European City Leadership Initiative
    N.Gore1@lse.ac.uk

  • Meg Hennessy

    Meg Hennessy

    Project Manager for City Teams, Bloomberg LSE European City Leadership Initiative
    M.Hennessy@lse.ac.uk

  • jennifer-ho-200xx200

    Jennifer Ho

    Executive Programme Administrator, Executive MSc in Cities
    j.ho8@lse.ac.uk
    +44 (0)20 7107 5232

  • Shehryar Janjua

    Shehryar Janjua

    Impact Manager, Bloomberg LSE European City Leadership Initiative 
    S.T.Janjua@lse.ac.uk

  • Marie-Kaune-2024-200x200

    Marie Kaune

    Project Manager for Mayoral Leadership, Bloomberg LSE European City Leadership Initiative
    M.S.Kaune@lse.ac.uk

  • Maggie McNulty

    Maggie McNulty

    Senior Communications Manager, Bloomberg LSE European City Leadership Initiative 
    M.Mcnulty@lse.ac.uk

  • Brendan O'Boyle

    Brendan O'Boyle

    Events Manager, Bloomberg LSE European City Leadership Initiative
    B.Oboyle@lse.ac.uk

  • Kate Ascher 200x200

    Kate Ascher

    Visiting Senior Fellow, LSE Cities
    Kate Ascher currently serves as the Milstein Professor of Urban Development at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she teaches real estate, infrastructure and urban planning courses. She continues to practice as a sub-consultant to Buro Happold, a global engineering firm based in the UK, where she served as partner through 2019 and founded the "Cities" team – which today works on a variety of resilience, public space and economic development projects on behalf of government and private clients across the US and internationally.

    Prior to joining Buro Happold, she served as Director of Development at Vornado Realty Trust, Executive Vice-President at the NYC Economic Development Corporation (under Mike Bloomberg), and Assistant Director of the Port at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In these capacities, she oversaw and delivered a variety of complex projects ranging from waterfront and park activation to transportation, real estate development and urban regeneration.

    Kate holds a BA from Brown University, and an M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, and is the author of several books on urban infrastructure (The Works, The Heightsand The Way to Go), as well as co-author of New York Rising, an illustrated anthology of New York City’s physical evolution. She serves on the Boards of the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center in NYC and the Holcim Foundation, based in Zurich

  • Michael Kimmelman

    Michael Kimmelman

    Visiting Senior Fellow, LSE Cities 
    Michael Kimmelman is the longtime architecture critic for The New York Times. He has written widely on urban and social affairs, housing and homelessness, public space and civil society, infrastructure, climate, community development and global migration. He has reported from Gaza, Medellin, Guangzhou, Baghdad and more than 40 countries. As a columnist based in Berlin, he covered political, urban and cultural affairs across Europe and the Middle East.

    He is also the founder and editor at large of Headway, an award-winning, philanthropically-supported journalistic team within The Times that has focused on large-scale global challenges and paths to progress.

    Kimmelman teaches at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He has twice been a Pulitzer Prize finalist and is the author of "The Accidental Masterpiece" and "The Intimate City," among other books.

    A native New Yorker, he received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yale and Harvard. In 2014, he was the Franke Visiting Fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale, where he was also a Poynter Fellow. For many years, he was the chief art critic of The New York Times.

    In his other life, he is a concert pianist, who has performed as a soloist and with chamber groups in series across America and Europe.

  • Elisabeth Costa200x200

    Elisabeth Costa

    Senior Visiting Fellow, Department of Psychological and Behvioural Science, LSE

Centre Governance

Jo Beall

Emeritus Professor and Distinguished Research Fellow LSE Cities

Ricky Burdett

Professor of Urban Studies; Director, LSE Cities

Laura Dawson

Consultant, Trustee and Non-exec Director and Chief Information Officer, LSE (2017–2022)

Philipp Rode

Associate Professor (Education); Executive Director, LSE Cities

Nicholas Stern (Chair)

IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, LSE; Chair, Global School of Sustainability at LSE; Chair, Grantham Research Institute

Andrés Velasco

Dean, School of Public Policy, LSE

  • Edgar Pieterse 200x200

    Edgar Pieterse
    Chair

    South African Research Chair in Urban Policy and Director of the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, African Centre for Cities

  • Cecilia-Vaca-Jones 200x200

    Cecilia Vaca Jones

    Senior Advisor to the Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority (ECA) and Programme Director of the Bernard van Leer Foundation (2016 to 2022)

  • Diana Rodriguez Franco 200x200

    Diana Rodriguez Franca

    Special Advisor on Gender and Diversity to the President of the Inter-American Development Bank and Secretary of Women’s Affairs, City of Bogota (2020 to 2024)

  • Emilia Saiz 200x200

    Emilia Saiz

    Secretary General, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG)

  • Henk Ovink 200x200

    Henk Ovink

    Executive Director of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water and first Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, Kingdom of the Netherlands

  • Jose Castillo 200x200

    José Castillo

    Chair of the Department of Architecture, College of Architecture, Art & Planning, Cornell University

  • Kai Wegrich 200x200

    Kai Wegrich

    Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy, Hertie School

  • Maria Vassilakou 200x200

    Maria Vassilakou

    Former Deputy Mayor and Executive City Councillor for Urban Planning, Traffic & Transport, Climate Protection, Energy and Public Participation, City of Vienna

  • Mark Watts 200x200

    Mark Watts

    Executive Director, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group

  • Yolande Barnes 200x200

    Yolande Barnes

    Chair, Bartlett Real Estate Institute, University College London