TSU Annual Review 2023
2023 has been a memorable year for the Transport Studies Unit as we celebrated its 50th anniversary through a wonderful two-day event in the summer and our annual public seminar series.
We have also continued to excel in our research, engagement and teaching. Transport’s many relationships with the climate emergency and social and spatial inequalities have remained at the centre of our attention. This has resulted in many publications, several new grants, two successful online courses and plenty of media and public engagements.
I am deeply grateful to everyone who has helped to make our notable 2023 possible.
Tim Schwanen, Director of the Transport Studies Unit and Professor of Transport Geography.
Research news
People
Staff news
Student news
Ignacio Perez
Ignacio defended his DPhil successfully in January. His research was entitled "Examining the role of data in smart city management: following the transport data dispositif in Santiago de Chile" We wish him every success for the future.
Xiang Ao
Xiang joined as a first year DPhil student with a focus on economic geography. His current research explores the dynamics of urban networks and industrial structures in China, and seeks to bridge "spaces of places" and "spaces of flows" in understanding industrial branching via big data and GIS techniques. His supervisors are Tim Schwanen and Darius Wójcik. Prior to Oxford, Xiang worked for two years as an urban data analyst for China Intelligent Urbanization Co-creation Center (CIUC) and World Urban Planning Education Network (WUPEN) where he applied visualisation and machine learning tools for urban planning projects and studies. He received his master's and bachelor's degree of engineering both from Tongji University, Shanghai.
Visitors
Vera Huwe
Vera was a visiting PhD student. Her research explores the relationship between social relations and fossil fuel dependence in transport. During her stay at the TSU, Vera researched the political economy of aviation. Vera is a socio-economist at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany and holds degrees from the University of Mannheim and the University of Bonn. She has studied abroad at the University of Nottingham and Ottawa University.
Nikolaj Grausland Kristensen
Nikolaj was a visiting PhD student from the Department of Planning, Aalborg University. His research investigates sociospatial inequalities in cities with focus on experiences of mobility in high and low-income neighbourhoods. During his stay at TSU, Nikolaj researched residents’ mobility in relation to the conception of parallel societies. Nikolaj also holds a MSc in Social Sciences in the fields of urban planning and geography from Roskilde University. He has previously visited University of Hamburg and studied abroad at Queen Mary University of London and Kansai University.
Dr Si Qiao
Si Qiao was a visiting academic during 2023. Si is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the University of Hong Kong and holds degrees in Urban Planning, Geomatics, GIS and Computer Science. Her thesis entitled “Understanding Ride-hailing and Inventing Future Transit”, received Postgraduate Dissertation Award from the Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy, and the Outstanding Dissertation Award from Transportation Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers.cademic. During her stay at the TSU, Si researched emerging urban mobility services and transport justice.
Dr Guibo Sun
Dr Guibo Sun visited the TSU for 3 months. Guibo is an Assistant Professor in Department of Urban Planning and Design at the University of Hong Kong. Guibo's research focuses around causal inference of the social, economic and health impact of large-scale transport infrastructure. He has recently started working on the infrastructure provision models, focusing on the institution design and political economy in delivering metro infrastructure in cities.
Dr John Renne
The TSU alumnus Professor John Renne made a return visit. John is the Director of the Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions and a Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science at Florida Atlantic University (FAU). John's work focuses on creating sustainability and resilience through land use and transportation systems. His more recent work has evolved to include technology, including virtual reality, to engage with the community on long-range planning for sea level rise.
In the media
Please contact the TSUdirector@tsu.ox.ac.uk if you have any queries about our Annual Review.