| Project Supervisor | Kevin Mazur |
| Institution & Department | King’s College London – Department of Political Economy |
| Research Area | RA6: Public Policy and Governance |
| Project Start Date | 1st July 2026 – flexible start date offered. |
| Project Duration | 3 months |
| Application Deadline | 4th June 2026 |
| Working Pattern | Either full-time or part-time. Please discuss and agree on Working Patterns with the Project Supervisor. |
| Working Arrangements | Hybrid |
| Flexibility offered. Some meetings are to be held in person but otherwise not location specific and some meetings can surely be conducted remotely. | |
| How to Apply | View Guidance Here |
Project Description
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This project is part of a broader research program that uses the city as a prism to understand the nature of the state in the Global South today and processes of social identification. Specifically, the research program examines how three components of the urban fabric—its built, social, and institutional dimensions—relate to patterns of governance, including public service delivery, control of violence, and state-society relations, in the Global South. It also examines how residents of urban neighbourhoods think of themselves and others, and how this structures social and political life.
The broader research program will conduct research in four cities—three from the Arab region, my geographic area of expertise, and one in sub-Saharan Africa—using an interdisciplinary mix of methods drawn from the social sciences and urban planning (interviews, participatory mapping exercises, surveys, and advanced geospatial analysis). Its distinct approach is that it combines in-depth qualitative interviews with cutting-edge quantitative measurement of the built environment and survey data. The built environment measures and survey data are only recently available for the primary region of research, due to advances in remote sensing technology (which compensate for the absence/inaccessibility/destruction of cadastral records) and political opening (in countries like Syria, Iraq, and Libya). The program also stands to inform policymakers, including local governments seeking to understand citizen needs (e.g., the types of neighbourhoods systematically neglected by public services) and areas of ‘success’ (e.g., where built and social fabric promote better quality of life).
The work of the Research Assisstant Intern (RA) will serve as a pilot on the built fabric aspect of the broader research program, systematically describing the built environment of one Global South city, Damascus. It will use geospatial methods taken from architecture and urban planning: the Spacematrix approach of Pont and Haupt [2023] and the related Space Syntax approach formulated at UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture, cf. Yamu et al. [2021]). The RA will then analyze the relationship of these measures to several outcomes of interest and co-author a policy brief with me on the results of the investigation.
References
Pont, Meta Berghauser, and Per Haupt. 2023. TU Delft OPEN Books Spacematrix: Space, Density and Urban Form – Revised Edition. Delft: TU Delft OPEN Books.
Yamu, Claudia, Akkelies van Nes, and Chiara Garau. 2021. “Bill Hillier’s Legacy: Space Syntax—A Synopsis of Basic Concepts, Measures, and Empirical Application.” Sustainability 13(6): 3394.
Internship Details
The RA will work, sequentially, in three distinct areas:
(1) constructing the built fabric database,
(2) correlating these measures with outcomes of interest, and
(3) co-authoring a policy brief on the findings of the analysis.
First, the RA will analyse the built fabric of Damascus using the Spacemate methodology developed by Pont and Haupt (2023). This consists in using geospatial software (e.g., QGIS, R) to (a) aggregate space into base land area groups and (b) calculate statistics including road network length, gross floor area, and building footprint.
Second, the RA will conduct correlational analyses of the built environment on a range of outcomes of interest, using existing, contemporary data on variables that include building destruction and population change during war, electricity access, and social cohesion.
The RA will also co-author (with me) a policy brief, for an organization like Chatham House, Century International or Carnegie Middle East Center. The brief will summarize key findings and provide recommendations about how to construct/reconstruct housing in Syria, following 15 years of war.
Anticipated Benefits for the Student
The RA will gain practical experience in using geospatial data to speak to theoretical questions and pressing policy issues.
Specifically, the RA will develop many of skills needed for this sort of research: generating original data, cleaning and merging with other spatial and non-spatial datasets, conducting statistical analysis, applying that analysis to test hypotheses and solve policy problems, and write up results.
Supervision will consist in regular meetings with me. In addition, one of my collaborators, an advanced PhD candidate in political science with advanced geospatial skills and significant life experience in Damascus, will join many of these meetings to offer empirical and technical insight and troubleshooting on the project tasks.
Skills, Experience and Knowledge Requirements
Essential Requirements:
- Some familiarity with a point-and-click GIS program, such as ArcGIS or QGIS;
- Proficiency in a command-line statistical programming language, R and/or Python (and ideally its spatial applications).
Desirable Requirements:
- Interest in and basic experience using AI to automate basic spatial data manipulation
- Ability to read Arabic scripy