Lees Loretta - Biography#

Loretta Lees is an urban geographer internationally known for her research on gentrification/urban regeneration, global urbanism, urban policy, urban public space, architecture and urban social theory. She has Irish and British citizenship, she acquired her BA (hons) at Queen’s University, Belfast and her PhD at the University of Edinburgh. She worked at King’s College London for 16 years where she was a Chair and Director of the Cities Group; she then moved to the University of Leicester as Director of Research. She has held 7 Visiting Professorships spanning the USA, Norway, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. She has an extremely high google scholar profile, indeed in 2017 she was identified by Urban Studies as the 17th most referenced author in urban geography worldwide and the only woman in the top 20. She was also identified as the 24th most productive in Geography and Urban Studies Internationally in 2010 (Kong and Qian, 2019, Urban Studies), and the top author internationally in gentrification studies (Uribe-Toril et al, 2018, Sustainability). She was elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2013. Since 2009 she has co-organised The Urban Salon: a London forum for architecture, cities and international Urbanism; and since 2016 The Leicester Urban Observatory. She was Chair of the London Housing Panel (2020-22) working with the Mayor of London. She has given 70 keynotes, plenaries and high profile pubic lectures. She has been awarded as PI nearly £2 million in research grant income to date. She has sat on grant panels across Europe and North America. She has been invited to present evidence at 3 public inquiries, Downing Street, Parliamentary Committees, UN-Habitat (just this year on spatial segregation). She has just been awarded the 2022 Marilyn J. Gittell Activist Scholar Award by the UAA for her public engagement and scholar activist work. She is frequently sought by the media – and has taken part in tv documentaries, radio programmes and been interviewed in numerous newspaper articles.