I am Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and have been teaching at the London School of Economics and Political Science since 2008. My research centres on the critical analysis of the political economic dynamics of speculative urbanisation, the politics of redevelopment and displacement, gentrification, housing, the right to the city, and mega-events as urban spectacles, with particular attention to Asian cities.

I have recently published an edited volume Global Gentrifications: Uneven Development and Displacement (Policy Press, 2015) and a monograph Planetary Gentrification (Polity Press, 2016), all part of collaboration with Loretta Lees (University of Leicester) and Ernesto López-Morales (University of Chile). The publication of these books emanated from a series of workshops Towards an Emerging Geography of Gentrification in the Global South in 2012, funded by the Urban Studies Foundation. A new volume in Korean has been published in November 2017 entitled 안티 젠트리피케이션: 무엇을 할 것인가 Anti Gentrification: What is to be Done (Dongnyok, 2017), which brought together activists, artists, professionals and academics, who have been at the forefront of fighting gentrification in South Korea in recent years. Chapters visit key issues that are pertinent to the understanding of how gentrification unfolds in South Korea’s uneven geography, and what measures can be envisaged to fight gentrification at both micro and macro scales.

My other on-going book projects include a monograph Making China Urban (Routledge), and two co-edited volumes Neoliberal Urbanism, Contesting Cities and Housing in Asia (Palgrave Macmillan) and The Political Economy of Mega Projects in Asia (Routledge).

I am a board member (trustee) of the Urban Studies Foundation, sit on the international advisory board of the journal Antipode and on the editorial board of the journals Urban Geography, City, Culture and Society, Radical Housing Journal, Space and Environment [공간과 사회] and China City Planning Review, and served the journal CITY as a senior editor. I am also a co-organiser of the Urban Salon, an interdisciplinary London forum for architecture, cities and international urbanism.

I was awarded BSc from Seoul National University in 1994, worked in the construction sector for six years before arriving at the LSE to pursue MSc (2000) and PhD (2006), and held a post-doctoral fellowship at the White Rose East Asia Centre, University of Leeds (2007-2008).

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