Managing Director
email: joe.shaw@urbanstudiesfoundation.org
Joe is responsible for the management of the USF and its grant programme, alongside shaping and implementing its long-term strategic direction in liaison with the Board of Trustees. Since joining in 2018, Joe has overseen several iterations of the core USF grant schemes, and the award of over one hundred new grants—including over fifty International Fellowships for scholars from the Global South, over twenty three-year Postdoctoral Fellowships, twenty-five Seminar Series programmes, and a range of other grants in the areas of pandemics and cities, knowledge mobilisation, and awardee support (representing over £6.5m of active investments in urban studies research and education). Alongside developing and improving the USF’s data collection, reporting, and governance, this has enabled the USF to make deeper commitments to issues of equality, diversity, and inclusion, and grow in all-round efficacy as a research funder.
Joe originally trained as an architect, working in practice for five years, before turning attention to human geography and urban studies via a research masters supported by a bursary from the London School of Economics and Political Science. After conducting thesis research around the volunteer-led recovery after Hurricane Sandy, he worked as a senior analyst for a market research agency in London. This led to an interest on the role of digital platforms and data analytics in reconfiguring urban development and real estate investment practices, via a PhD at the Oxford Internet Institute. Joe has published on the right to the city, real estate data analytics, platform urbanism, and the gig economy. He also supports the dissemination of academic research on these topics for more general audiences, via co-founding the publisher Meatspace Press (recent books include Eaten by the Internet, Fake AI, Data Justice and COVID-19, and How to Run a City Like Amazon and Other Fables).