Dr Maria Christina Georgiadou, Reader in the School of Applied Management, was awarded the Richard Trevithick Memorial Fund Prize at the 2022 Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Publishing Awards for her paper entitled Towards Sustainable Informal Settlements: A Toolkit for Community-led Upgrading in Durban, on 14 October 2022.
The ICE Publishing Awards, which this year took place at One Great George Street in London, celebrate the best work published in the ICE’s journals. It awards authors from both industry and academia who have produced work judged by their peers to be of exceptional quality and of benefit to the civil engineering, construction and materials science communities.
The Richard Trevithick Memorial Fund Prize is specifically awarded annually for the best paper published on a sustainability topic and is judged to be of exceptional quality and impact to the civil engineering and construction communities.
Dr Georgiadou’s winning paper, which was written with co-authors Dr Claudia Loggia from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Dr Iwona Bisaga and Professor Priti Parikh from University College London, provides an overview of existing methods and tools focused on informal settlement upgrading (ISU) in South Africa and presents the process of a novel, integrated toolkit for the incremental upgrading of informal settlements in Durban, as part of the collaborative interdisciplinary project ISULABANTU.
The paper’s review of existing toolkits revealed several critical gaps related to community-led practices, integrated approaches to housing and environmental management, and gender. The integrated ISULABANTU toolkit aimed to fill these gaps and complement the existing resources. It also aims to provide a framework for action research, active involvement of and partnership building with local communities in upgrading practices required to achieve sustainable human settlements.
Published in Engineering Sustainability, the journal’s editorial panel said of the paper: “This paper is an excellent example of interdisciplinary working across the engineering and social sciences, which also supports diversity and inclusion and provides a useable framework for practitioners.”
Speaking about receiving the Richard Trevithick Memorial Fund Prize, Dr Georgiadou said: “Receiving this prestigious award is a proud moment of my academic year. It is based on seven years of contribution in the field of informality, seeking inclusive and socially acceptable solutions that promote livelihood development, climate resilience and community self-reliance in housing construction and environmental services. I look forward to the next steps of the journey and a new larger round of funding. I would also like to thank the wider team of UK and South African academics, practitioners, policy makers, NGOs, community organisations and community researchers that have made fieldwork and large dissemination possible – even during the toughest pandemic policies!”
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