Overview: Associate Professor Parham works as the University of Hertfordshire's Head of Urbanism and Planning at the Ebenezer Howard School of Planning located within the School of Law, Education and Society. In this role Susan supervises doctoral students through both the UH Urbanism Unit and the Professional Doctorate in Heritage and undertakes substantial Masters and undergraduate module leading, teaching, and project supervision in sustainable planning, geography, urban design, architecture and heritage areas.

Partnership working: Susan runs the Ebenezer Howard School of Planning's Urbanism Unit as a locus for UH research on urbanism, planning and placemaking with colleagues from Planning, Geography, Architecture, and Design, and also providing an institutional focus for extensive external partnership working with institutions active in this research and teaching area. Partnerships include with the King’s Foundation and the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Grenoble (ENSAG) leading to successful university level Memorandums of Agreement with these institutions on teaching and research. UHUU also hosts an active research partnership with the University Malaysia Putra and hosts visiting professors, currently Prof José Geraldo Simões Junior, of Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Paulo, undertaking teaching and research on garden cities and suburbs. Susan was the Academic Director of the International Garden Cities Institute (IGCI) from 2015 to 2022. Susan has previously worked in partnership with Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation and closely with colleagues from Gascoyne Cecil Estates and Regionaal Landschap Kempen en Maasland.

Research Impact: Susan is very focused on research impact and has recently contributed evidence to Parliamentary Select Committees, All Party Groups and Parliamentary Commissions based on expertise on both new towns and on food, based on research undertaken internationally on new towns for the Royal Town Planning Institute, and longer term expertise in both this research area and in food placemaking, planning, policy and economics. In relation to new towns most recently these encompass giving oral and then written evidence as a witness to the House of Lords Built Environment Select Committee as part of their Inquiry on New Towns: Creating Communities in November 2025; providing expert evidence to London Assembly Planning and Regeneration Committee on new towns for London in January 2026, and contributing evidence to the All Party Parliamentary Group on New Towns in a session in April 2026. In relation to food Susan provided oral and written evidence to the UK Parliamentary Commisision on the Right to Food through panels and roundtable sessions held in June and July 2026 based on long term food, place and planning research based expertise.

Research interests: Susan has a long term research background in areas including food and spatial design, nature-based solutions to food and place issues, sprawl retrofitting and transport oriented, compact and sustainable cities, the urbanism of Garden Cities and New Towns, and engagement on planning, urban design and urbanism. Susan is co-editor of the Journal of Urbanism.

Recent research Among recent primary research based outputs from a much longer list that can be accessed through the research profile 'research' and 'projects' tabs, are the following:

·      2026: co-authored article on “Futureproofing New Towns: Lessons for London” for Planning in London

·      2025: co-authored two extensive research reports for the RTPI on international and UK facing learning to “Futureproof New Towns: International lessons on how to build flexible and adaptable new towns in England”

·      2025: co-authored article on research in the peer reviewed article “Garden Suburbs and Barry Parker: the projects for São Paulo (Brazil)” for the Journal of Planning History

·      2024: a pioneering essay on food and place from 1990 was included in the book, Essays that Changed Australia (Melbourne University Press, 2024)

·      2024: authored Proceedings from a Symposium on “Developing resilient food space using nature-based solutions in Malaysia and the United Kingdom” which ran with colleagues from Universiti Malaysia Putra

·      2024: authored article on “Food, Cities and Nature Based Solutions” for Japan Architect

·      2023: co-authored peer reviewed article, “Terms of Engagement: Mobilising Citizens in Edible Nature-based Solutions” for Journal of Urbanism

·      2022: co-authored peer reviewed article "Getting there: learning from engagement practice on convivial food urbanism" for Journal of Urbanism

·      2021: co-editing book Exploring Food and Urbanism (Routledge, 2021)

·      2021: co-authored book chapter on practice-based Garden City focused education and teaching in Des Cités-Jardins Pour Le XX1e Siècle (Parenthèses, 2021).

Scholarly activities and research dissemination: Susan is co-editor of the Journal of Urbanism and is a member of the editorial board, a role she has held since the Journal’s inception in 2007. She has also been editor (and chair of the editorial panel) of the peer-reviewed journal, Urban Design and Planning, for the Institute of Civil Engineers from 2016 to 2020. Susan is an active peer reviewer and has provided numerous peer reviews for journals including the Journal of Urbanism; Urban Design International; Journal of Ethnographic Theory; Space and Culture; Societies; Sustainability; Agriculture and Human Values; Land; and Urban Science among others.

Susan is active in presenting urbanism research including at the conferences “Aspects of Change: Spatialising London gentrification, 60 years after Ruth Glass” (July 2024); International Association of Landscape Ecology (July 2022); 4^th International Conference on Agricultural Geography and Land Engineering; and the UK and Ireland Planning Research Conference. Symposia presentations include on Developing Resilient Food Space Using Nature-Based Solutions in Malaysia and the UK (2023); on other New Towns (Sorbonne, 2022); and on “Garden Cities for the 21st Century”” in the French garden suburb of Suresnes (2021).

Research summer schools: In 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 Susan ran the food and urbanism stream of an annual two week international Summer School on health and urbanism in Venice as part of the Biennale hosted by the European Cultural Academy with partners from the University of Oxford and the King’s Foundation. Susan managed the University of Hertfordshire contribution and ran a food and place stream for a Health and Urbanism Autumn School at Oxford University in 2022. Susan provides annual guest lectures on food and place and on engagement on urbanism for the University of Oxford’s MSc in Sustainable Urban Development.

Research Excellence Framework contribution: Susan is a member of the University’s Design Research Group and contributes to the Design Unit of Assessment in the most recent iteration of the Research Excellence Framework.  

Academic qualifications, fellowships and memberships: Susan holds undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in political economy (BA), town planning (Grad Dip, plus bridging subjects leading to professional accreditation), urban design (MA), and urban sociology (PhD) from the London School of Economics’ Cities Programme. Susan is a Research Associate for the Laboratory for Building Cultures, at the École Nationale Supérieure d'architecture de Grenoble (ENSAG), a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) and a Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI). Susan is an active alumnus of Living Streets as its former deputy chair of trustees.

Research interests include the urbanism of Garden Cities and New Towns; food and city design; urban morphology and renewal; design processes for remaking 'sprawl' urbanism toward more transport oriented development; and urban sustainability through nature based solutions.

Recent publications and conference presentations include:

“Living in an Age-Friendly Community: Evidence from a Masterplanned Development in Southwest Sydney”, Jones, A., Parham, S., in Rojo-Pérez, F. (ed.), Fernández-Mayoralas, G. (ed.), Sánchez-González, D. (ed.) & Tchounwou, P. B. (ed.), 11 Jan 2023, (E-pub ahead of print) In: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 20, 2, 21 p.

“Getting there: learning from engagement practice on convivial urbanism to develop productive urban landscapes”, Parham, S., Edwards, F. & Mandersheid, M., 11 Jul 2022, p. 1-10. 10 p. presented at the IALE 2022 European Landscape Ecology Congress: Making the future, learning from the past.

“La Garden City, un précedent au service de l'enseignement du projet architectural: Entre théorie et experimentations”, Parham, S., Hardy, M., Sadoux, S. & Dubus, N., 20 Jun 2022, in the book Des Cites-Jardins pour Le XXIe Siècle: Valorisation. Prèservation. Perspectives. 1 ed. Marseille: Parenthèses, p. 375-384 10 p.

“Learning sustainable urbanism lessons from ‘other’ New Towns in the UK: Contributing to design for health and wellbeing in the postwar British New Towns (and beyond)”, presentation Parham, S., Hardy, M. & Sadoux, S., Sorbonne, Paris New Towns Study Day 7 Apr 2022, p. 1-35. 35 p.

Exploring Food and Urbanism, Parham, S. & Hardy, M. (eds.), 10 Sep 2021, 1st ed. London: Routledge. 144 p. (Special Issues as Books)

Teaching specialisms include principles of urbanism; the urbanism of Garden Cities and New Towns; urban sprawl 'retrofitting'; urban design and conservation theory and practice; and the theory and practice of design focused stakeholder engagement.