Dr Abbas Ziafati Bafarasat
AD (Law) BA (Human Geography) MA (City & Regional Planning) PhD (Planning & Landscape), MRTPI, FHEA
Senior Lecturer in Town Planning
Role
Abbas Ziafati Bafarasat is an accredited Town Planner (MRTPI), accredited higher education teacher (FHEA), and Senior Lecturer in Town Planning, also managing the programme in Spatial Planning Studies. He has academic qualifications in Law, Geography and Planning.
Abbas completed his PhD in Planning & Landscape at the University of Manchester, UK (2015). He undertook Postdoctoral studies at TU Dortmund, Germany.
He has worked in five national contexts and supervised master's theses and doctoral dissertations to successful completion. Before joining academia, Abbas worked for several years in private practice.
His research interests include: (a) healthy places, (b) strategic planning, and (c) sustainability learning
Teaching and supervision
Courses
Modules taught
Module leadership:
- PLAN4013: Housing Matters
- PLAN5008: Mediating Change: Governance, Politics and Social Actors
- PLAN 5007: Research Design
- PLAN6001: Independent Study in Planning
- PLAN5009: Plan and Policymaking
Lecture and teaching contributions:
- ESTM4002: Introduction to Spatial Planning
- PLAN5009: Plan and Policy Making
- PLAN6003: Strategic Planning and Policy
Supervision
Abbas has supervised to successful completion and externally examined Master's and Doctorate students. He is open to being contacted by potential candidates who are interested in undertaking research relating to:
- healthy places
- strategic planning
- sustainability transitions
Research
Abbas has:
- an interdisciplinary research interest in strategies to built healthy and sustainable cities
- an interest in citizen science and bottom-up agenda setting in public policy
- introduced - for the first time - a framework of ‘strategic urban design’ to build sustainable cities by low-cost, small multi-projects
- proposed - for the first time – ‘behavioral’ sustainability indicators
- led global scale research involving 27 academics from 12 countries to establish planning competencies for sustainable development, also conceptualising, for the first time, transformative pedagogy in planning
- led a study that conceptualised Start-It-Yourself urbanism as a more effective alternative to Do-It-Yourself urbanism.
Research impact
Abbas has been working with local partners and regional stakeholders in action research of his outouts in the three areas of his research - that is healthy places, strategic planning, and sustainability learning.