Month in review: January 2022

I started to write this post to realise the last time I wrote a month in review was exactly one year ago – in January 2021. As I’ve written many times, it is great to look back and realise that yes, the time goes fast, but we do manage to pack lots of great things in it. These monthly reviews are my version of the ‘done list’, and they do indeed help to keep motivation and focus. Here is what happened in the first month of 2022.

Research

I started working on a new project (yep, I have a lot to learn from Batman…) which will look into urban climate in planning education in Australia. During January we have designed the project, done a preliminary literature review, prepared and submitted ethics application.

I also revisited a second one – which was idling since 2018! – looking into relationships between urban design and planning and the health of citizens and the environment.

A project in partnership with Townsville City Council (Queensland, Australia) is now moving forward and we have (re)ordered the climate equipment necessary for the project and opened an online survey. If you are reading this, live in Townsville for over 2 years and are 18+ years old, please consider filling in our survey here.

Another similar ongoing project which is a partnership with Ipswich City Council (Queensland, Australia) also still have its survey open. Participants are also residents from Ipswich for 2+ years who are 18+ years old. The survey is available here.

Along with a past honours student, we started to reassess his dataset in a different way to prepare his study for a publication.

Writing and publications

This year started with two new publications. One about a community consultation process based on a UN-Habitat Urban Thinkers Campus, and a second one a systematic literature review into green infrastructure arrangements for improved urban microclimates.

I also worked to finalise a paper with data collected many (many!) years ago, and on another article with a PhD student.

Presentations and teaching

In the teaching front, throughout summer, I’ve worked with a few research internship students who dedicated themselves to some of the projects mentioned above. This was an excellent experience both for them and for me, and I plan to write more about this initiative soon.

I haven’t delivered any presentations or classes. The classes at USC start on 28th February and the only teaching-related activity was course preparation.

Learning

In November I undertook a statistics mini course. In the degree I completed – Architecture and Urbanism in Brazil – unfortunately stats is not part of the curriculum, so my knowledge was close to inexistent. However, it is a topic I find fascinating and I have several datasets that could/will benefit from stats analysis in the near future. Now in January I finally managed to start putting in practice this new knowledge, and it has been a great experience and new skill to have.

I am also using a Systematic Quantitative Literature Review method in one of the studies I (re)started during this summer, and it is also a new(ish) method for me, so there was a bit of an exciting learning curve there too.

Service and engagement

I have been working as the guest editor for a special issue for the Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing & Service Industries journal. The topic of the SI is ‘Cities, Urban Design and Development’.

I also had meetings with the AECURN QLD Committee and planned some new things for 2022. One of them is our AECURN QLD LinkedIn group, which is open to all early and mid-career researchers in urban-related research areas in Queensland. Join us?

Finally, I had some meetings for the EMCA (Early and Mid-Career Academics) Network at USC, for which I am the School of Law and Society representative. Some nice initiatives internally at USC also coming up.

I didn’t take any holidays apart from Christmas-New Year, and my focus for January was research. I didn’t feel like I had achieved as much as I’d like, but looking back it feels like I have managed to progress some of the work I really wanted to move forward, particularly research projects that are sometimes compromised during teaching times. Based on this ‘done list’, January feels like a winner!