Welsh School of Architecture welcomes Clare Melhuish as Honorary Professor

We are delighted to welcome Clare Melhuish as an Honorary Professor.

Clare is a Professorial Research Fellow at UCL and served as Director of the UCL Urban Laboratory from 2018–2024, a cross-faculty research network and department within the Faculty of the Built Environment. During this time, she led and curated a wide range of research programmes, events and publications that cross the boundaries between academic research and public engagement. She also led the Lab’s involvement in the development of UCL East on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, including the creation of the UCL Urban Room for public-facing research activities linked to the MASc programme in Global Urbanism.

An expert in the anthropology of built environments, Clare’s research spans themes including ecological urbanism, university-led urban regeneration, critical urban heritage in postcolonial and decolonial contexts (including the use of digital visualisation technologies in architectural practice), and the influence of place on economic wellbeing. She is the author and co-editor of several books, including Co-curating the City: Universities and Urban Heritage Past and Future (UCL Press) and Post-war Architecture between Italy and the UK: Exchanges and Transcultural Influences (UCL Press).

Alongside her academic work, Clare is an established architecture critic, author, lecturer and curator. She has written for journals including The Architects’ Journal, Building Design and Architectural Design, and currently contributes to and serves on the External Advisory Board of Touchstone: The Architectural Journal for Wales.

Clare has collaborated with colleagues here in the Welsh School of Architecture on several recent projects, including The State of the Legacy: interrogating a decade of Olympic ‘regeneration’, a major report and conference evaluating the legacy of London 2012. She has also co-authored work with Professor Juliet Davis on decolonisation in planning history, led a Cardiff Capital Region consultancy project on economic wellbeing in partnership with the School, and is currently co-editing the Handbook on Urban Regeneration (De Gruyter) with Juliet Davis and former WSA postgraduate researcher Dr Luz Navarro Eslava.

Clare delivered a guest lecture at the School in March 2025 titled “The city in the country? Thinking ecological urbanism through places in relation, starting in South East Wales.”

As Honorary Professor, Clare joins our External Advisory Board where her experience of international collaboration and interdisciplinarity across built environment, social sciences and humanities will be greatly valued. She will work with colleagues to develop joint research and deliver societal impact, building on existing collaborations and engagement with professional and public bodies in Wales.