Rolee Aranya 
Rolee Aranya is a Professor at the Department of Architecture and Planning and the program leader of the UEP. Her research interests include relational studies of poverty and informality, globalization and urban restructuring and governance as a form for organization in planning and urban development. She has been program leader for the Master program in Urban Ecological Planning till Autumn 2014 and continues as the Program Leader for the Master’s program in Sustainable Urban Transitions.

Peter Andreas Gotsch
Professor Dr. Peter Andreas Gotsch is an urban planner and architect, graduated from Columbia University, USA, and RWTH Aachen University in Germany.  His experience ranges from lead urban expert and regular consultant to UN-Habitat, the World Bank, GIZ and Misereor/KZE and to multiple local and national governments, having completed more than thirty missions to more than twenty countries.
Former Professor of Design and Urban Development and interim chair of the Mundus Urbano Programme on International Cooperation and Urban Development at the TU (Technical University) Darmstadt, Germany.
Ex-coordinator of the project U-CARE – Urban Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa: It's impact, Coping Strategies and Peace Building (VW Foundation, Germany) and SHAKTI – Sustainable Holistic Approach and Know-How Tailored to India (BMBF, Germany).
Research focus on new planning approaches, the research-policy nexus, innovation at grassroot level, social housing, urban safety, public space and place-making, cities and migration, co-production of space by new urban actors, scenario planning methods and comparative research approaches.
Author of various publications and policy reports and regular key-note speaker, guest lecturer and host of multiple conferences and events related planning and urbanization in the global South.
Co-editor of the Trialog-Journal and part of the scientific board of the N-AERUS network.
www.peter-gotsch.de

Mrudhula Koshy
Mrudhula Koshy is an urbanist and assistant professor based at NTNU since 2018. She has a postmaster’s degree in urbanism from TU Delft (The Netherlands) and IUAV Venice (Italy). Her doctoral research investigates the concepts of uncertainty, resilience and contingency, and the strategic use of these concepts at the intersection of spatial planning, decision-making in governance, disaster risk reduction, and humanitarian responses to deal with unprecedented environmental crises in developmental contexts. From 2014-2018, she worked in urbanism offices in The Netherlands and gained valuable experience regarding long-term initiatives in energy landscapes, urban metabolism, post-fossil energy scenarios and multi-scalar design solutions for transitioning to renewable energy use, circular economy, productive cities and sustainable mobility infrastructure. Her core interests lie in developing context-based, multi-scalar strategies and methodologies for complex spatial research and design themes to address structural ambiguities and urgencies especially in the global south.

Wang Yu 
Yu Wang is senior researcher at department of Architecture and Planning, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His research is focusing on the fast urbanization and its impacts on urban inhabitants, heritage conservation and urban resilience. He also holds a part-time position at rector’s office for NTNU-China cooperation. Since 2021, he has been appointed as deputy head of the department for research.  

Cinthia Freire Stecchini

Cinthia Freire Stecchini graduated from the UEP master’s program in 2019 and holds a bachelor’s degree both in Psychology (University of São Paulo, Brazil, 2011) and in Architecture and Urbanism (Centro Universitário Moura Lacerda, Brazil, 2016). She has experience working with informal settlements (favelas) in Brazil through engaging with non-governmental and civil society organizations. Her doctoral research focuses on the relationship between participation and social innovation in urban planning, identifying the conditions needed for participatory processes and practices to be socially innovative. Through a narrative approach, she investigates understandings and practices of participation initiated both by governing authorities and civil society actors, as well as how they link to, and impact, formal planning.

Vija Viese

Vija Viese is a PhD candidate working on community-based adaptation to flooding in informal settlements through the lens of environmental and spatial justice. She holds a bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering from RTU (Latvia) and a master’ s degree in architecture from ENSAN (France). She has demonstrated experience as project manager for diverse urban design projects—ranging from innovative new developments, inclusive urban renewal plans, to large-scale strategy consulting—all through the lens of sustainability. Her main topics of interest are flood resilient neighborhoods and communities, working with marginalized social groups, and conceiving vibrant and inclusive public spaces. She is also actively involved in City Space Architecture, an international non-profit partnered with UN-Habitat, where she is an Advisory Board member as well as the Communications Manager for the Public Space Academy project. In collaboration with the urban think-tank UNICITI and the university of Strathclyde, she works on urban morphometrics and applications of such methods of analysis in the Global South.

Marcin Sliwa

Elena Archipovaite

Hans Christie Bjønness 

Cathrine Brun 

Paul Currion

Nabeel Hamdi

Rohit Jigyasu

Hilde Refstie

David Sanderson

Anshu Sharma

Hans Skotte 

David Smith

Leda Stott

Vilde Ulset