Dr Ersilia Verlinghieri

Research Affiliate

About

Ersilia holds a researcher working on the CREDS project 'The governance of radical mobility change'. She is also fellow of the Regional Study Association where she is leading a project on Exploring the potential of a postgrowth-inspired agenda for urban transport planning after COVID-19.

From 2017 to April 2021, Ersilia was the Programme Coordinator of the Global Challenges in Transport series of short courses, part of the Oxford Leadership Programme. Before joining the TSU in 2016, Ersilia was a PhD student at the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds (2012-2016), where she also taught on a number of undergraduate programmes and worked as a Research Assistant.

Current Research

Ersilia uses an interdisciplinary approach to develop new ways of theorising, researching, and reconfiguring transport systems to tackle contemporary ecological and social crises. Under the broader theme of Her work can be grouped under 3 main themes:

From distributive to procedural justice: Developing theoretical and methodological approaches to better understand the unequal distribution of the social impacts of interventions.
This theme includes the development of new methods to assess the impacts of transport interventions (such as social impact and health impact assessment frameworks), with a specific focus on complementing the desk-based spatial analysis with participatory methodologies (see for example Lucas, Philips and Verlinghieri, 2021).
Restorative and epistemic justice: Opening the theoretical and methodological horizons to new theories and voices (decolonizing the discipline).
The research in these theme aims to promote justice as recognition of the different voices and needs within planning, and links to the broader agenda of decolonising transport studies. The theoretical work on expanding the understanding of transport and mobility justice (see for example Verlinghieri and Schwanen 2020) is linked to attempts to redesign decolonised spaces for teaching and researching on transport and mobilities (Verlinghieri and Middleton, 2020).
Building mobility justice: Contribute to rethinking the processes of transport planning and putting into action of different futures.
The work in these theme aims to open up planning to actions and contributes from grassroots actors and radical theory, not only recognizing their validity, but trying to understand their contribution in connection with the socio-political and economic dynamics that form 'mobilities'. Works include the study of the influence of social movements into transforming transport planning (Verlinghieri 2020; Verlinghieri and Venturini 2018) and the most recent research projects on the governance of radical decarbonization pathways with CREDS and on post-growth transport planning approaches with the RSA.

Teaching and Outreach

Ersilia is Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has been awarded with merit with the University of Leeds Teaching Award. She has experience of undergraduate and graduate teaching. She has delivered several talks and training programs for transport professionals and academics.

A full publication list is available via https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=m1uhxrAAAAAJ&hl=en

Publications

Verlinghieri, E., Brovarone, E. and Staricco, L. (2024) “The conflictual governance of street experiments, between austerity and post-politics”, Urban Studies, 61(5), pp. 878–899.

Verlinghieri, E., Haines-Doran, T., Marsden, G. and Schwanen, T. (2024) “The role of funding in the ‘performative decarbonisation’ of transport in England”, Political Geography, 109.

Brömmelstroet, M., Nikolaeva, A., Mladenović, M., Milakis, D., Ferreira, A., Verlinghieri, E., Cadima, C., de Abreu e Silva, J. and Papa, E. (2022) “Have a good trip! expanding our concepts of the quality of everyday travelling with flow theory”, Applied Mobilities, 7(4), pp. 352–373.

Thondoo, M., De Vries, D., Rojas-Rueda, D., Ramkalam, Y., Verlinghieri, E., Gupta, J. and Nieuwenhuijsen, M. (2020) “Framework for participatory quantitative health impact assessment in low- and middle-income countries”, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(20).

Verlinghieri, E. and Middleton, J. (2020) “Decolonising and provincializing knowledge within the neoliberal university? The challenge of teaching about sustainable transport”, Journal of Transport Geography, 88, p. 102785.

Verlinghieri, E. and Schwanen, T. (2020) “Transport and mobility justice: Evolving discussions”, Journal of Transport Geography, 87.

Verlinghieri, E. (2019) “Learning from the grassroots: A resourcefulness-based worldview for transport planning”, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 133, pp. 364–377.

Verlinghieri, E. and Venturini, F. (2017) “Exploring the right to mobility through the 2013 mobilizations in Rio de Janeiro”, Journal of Transport Geography, 67, pp. 126–136.

Nieuwenhuijsen, M., Khreis, H., Verlinghieri, E., Mueller, N. and Rojas-Rueda, D. (2017) “Participatory quantitative health impact assessment of urban and transport planning in cities: A review and research needs.”, Environment international, 103, pp. 61–72.

Khreis, H., Warsow, K., Verlinghieri, E., Guzman, A., Pellecuer, L., Ferreira, A., Jones, I., Heinen, E., Rojas-Rueda, D., Mueller, N., Schepers, P., Lucas, K. and Nieuwenhuijsen, M. (2016) “The health impacts of traffic-related exposures in urban areas: Understanding real effects, underlying driving forces and co-producing future directions”, Journal of Transport & Health, 3(3), pp. 249–267.