International Development Planning Review is a peer-reviewed journal which provides an interdisciplinary platform for the critical study of development related practices, planning and policy in the global South. We hear from the co-editors of the journal as two new appointments are made to the journal’s editorial team.

The co-editors of International Development Planning Review (IDPR) are delighted to welcome two new additions to the editorial team of the journal – Dr Aysegul Can and Dr Lakshmi Priya Rajendran. Dr Can takes over the role of Viewpoints Editor from Dr Jess Hope, who has stepped down after overseeing this section of the journal since 2019. The co-editors extend their warmest thanks to Dr Hope for her energy and efforts in driving forwards the Viewpoints series and bringing a series of key debates and provocations to the journal’s readers. At the same time, we are hugely excited to work with Dr Can over the coming months and years to take the Viewpoints section of the journal forwards in not only contributing to but leading key conversations within the field. 

Alongside the appointment of a new Viewpoints Editor, we are delighted that Dr Rajendran is joining our team as the inaugural New Voices and Debates Editor. This new role has been created to both cement IDPR’s reputation as a supportive space for early career scholars and contributors from the Global South, and to create strategic spaces for review-style pieces that engage with new and emerging debates in exciting ways. We are excited by Dr Rajendran’s vision for this role and the opportunity to work with her to realise this ambition.

Daniel Hammett, University of Sheffield & Glyn Williams, University of Sheffield.

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Introducing the new additions

Dr Aysegul Can

Currently Lecturer at Istanbul Medeniyet University, Department of Urban and Regional Planning. I am very excited to be part of the editorial team and hope to use this role as an opportunity to further theoretical discussions on pressing urban issues in the Global South. 

My current research interests stem from my experiences as an urbanist in the last 10 years. As an undergrad in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, I started to be interested in urban conservation and the urban renewal and regeneration projects in the historic environment. This interest led me to study urban conservation laws and new approaches in the historic environment of Istanbul during my studies in my Master’s.

While studying urban conservation, urban renewal and regeneration, I interviewed many people in gentrified places that emerged as a result of massive urban projects and observed the ways in which many working class inhabitants were mistreated and displaced from these neighbourhoods that were considered as valuable land for the housing market. My most recent research focuses on the changing world economy, its effect on the housing market, and processes of urban regeneration and gentrification in the Global South. I particularly pay attention to social exclusion, displacement, inequality, urban unrest, and territorial stigmatization in the urban space. This includes poverty studies in world cities in the Global South and the ways in which urban and housing policies are implemented. I am concerned by the way the national and local governments have been treating the working class people living in poor neighbourhoods. The lack of efficient affordable housing policies, treatment of poor people, and how this is a recurring problem not only in Turkey but in many other Global South and sometimes Global North countries have driven me to investigate these phenomena. In the long term, my goal is to establish myself as an international expert in the field of urban studies and planning and make significant contributions to academic knowledge while making an impact on the lives of people through policy-making.

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Dr Lakshmi Priya Rajendran

Dr Lakshmi Priya Rajendran is currently a Lecturer in Environmental and Spatial Equity and Co-Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, UK. She is also the Co-chair for the UCL’s Environment Research domain and Academic co-chair for the  UCL Advisory Group on Climate Change and Health. Lakshmi is an architect and urbanist. Her teaching and research interests deal with city imaginaries, decoloniality, critical social and digital media, spatial representation and practice, identity negotiations, and cultural encounters in contemporary cities. She is particularly interested in an interdisciplinary understanding of social, spatial, temporal and material practices in cities and a comparative study of these practices in the Global South.

Lakshmi has led several externally funded projects, some of them include collaborative project in India (PI, ESRC-GCRF funded, Inclusive and Resilient Peri-urban Planning and development (ongoing)), Turkey (PI, Newton Funded, Heritage-led Urban Resilience Planning for Smart-Cities), Brazil (Co-I, Research England-GCRF funded, Socio-ecological sustainability planning and management), UK (Co-I, NERC funded, Flood Resilience Planning and Environmental Assessment Transnational; Royal Academy of Engineering funded Frontiers Champion Award; and Peri-urban and Environment Resilience in the Global South). Currently she is leading a two-year research project Transgressing ‘Good’ Cities: Decolonising City Narratives for Just Urban Futures (2022-2024), funded by the British Academy’s Knowledge Frontiers: International Interdisciplinary Research funding programme.

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