Catarina Heeckt

Catarina Heeckt is a Senior Policy Fellow at LSE Cities. Her work explores the intersection of urban governance, public sector innovation and environmental policy in cities. Catarina is passionate about climate action and accelerating the transition towards resilient cities by translating academic research insights into concrete policy advice. Her current research is focused on the public acceptability of sustainable mobility initiatives in the context of broader shifts towards post-growth urban development. Her work is interdisciplinary in nature and has always been strongly grounded in qualitative research methods. She manages the ‘Capacity Deep Dives’ research strand of the LSE Bloomberg European City Leadership Initiative – exploring ethnographic and peer-research approaches to shed light on how European city governments develop and sustain a culture of innovation in city halls to help them tackle their most complex challenges.

Over the past 13 years, Catarina has contributed to a significant number of reports, projects and policy initiatives at LSE, including work on the Economics of Green Cities programme, exploring the co-benefits of urban climate action for C40, work on municipal finance for the Emergency Governance Initiative with UCLG and Metropolis, and coordinating the inputs of 20 global governance experts to the New Urban Agenda agreed at Habitat III. From 2016 to 2021 Catarina was the project manager and lead researcher for LSE Cities’ contribution to the Coalition for Urban Transitions, a major global initiative supporting national governments to secure economic prosperity and tackle the climate crisis by transforming cities, led by C40 and WRI. As part of this engagement, she focused specifically on the importance of improving urban accessibility and integrating transport and housing policy to improve compact and connected urban development. She also spent several years working closely with the European Environment Agency on their urban sustainability work and understanding the drivers and barriers to environmental transitions in European cities. From 2022 to 2024 Catarina was the Programme Lead for the European Cities Programme – a research, engagement and capacity building programme on the future of European cities. Since 2022 she has been the Chair of the LSE’s Research and Policy Staff Association. She has collaborated with a wide range of public private and third sector partners, including UN-Habitat, the OECD, the European Environment Agency, Arup, C40, ICLEI, UCLG, Eurocities, as well as national and local governments in the UK, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Mexico, Peru, India, Ethiopia and Myanmar. Catarina holds an MSc in Environmental Policy and Regulation from the LSE and a BA in Political Science and International Development from McGill University, Montreal.