Dr Jin Xu BArch, MPhil, PhD, FHEA

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK, 2025

PhD in Urban Planning, Tsinghua University, China, 2017

MPhil in Planning, Growth and Regeneration, University of Cambridge, UK, 2013

Bachelor of Architecture, Tsinghua University, China, 2011

Dr Jin Xu completed her BArch and PhD at Tsinghua University, and an MPhil degree in planning at the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge. Her master’s and doctoral research focused on evaluating the effectiveness of plan implementation.

Before joining Birmingham, she worked for several years in the Department of Urban Planning at Southeast University in Nanjing, gaining substantial experience of teaching and research in the area of urban planning and design.

Jin is currently Assistant Professor in Sustainable Urban Planning and Design in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham. Building on GEES’s strengths in sustainability research, she aims to advance science-based approaches to inform urban design and promote more inclusive, resilient and healthy cities.

Jin has international academic collaborations and professional experience, including visiting research at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (2015), a visiting scholarship in the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge (2022–2023) and work in architecture and urban design firms in Singapore and China.

Jin contributes to teaching on the MSc Sustainable Urban Planning and Design and leads the core module Sustainable Places, an urban design studio within the program. She has designed and delivered studios in collaboration with guest tutors from universities and design firms in the UK, focusing on sustainable approaches to post-industrial regeneration.

She also supervises MSc dissertations in urban studies and planning.

Jin welcomes enquiries and applications from prospective doctoral students and visiting researchers in urban planning and design, sustainable cities, spatial inequality, and data-driven approaches to urban studies.

Dr Jin Xu’s research focuses on two interconnected areas:

Digitalisation and spatial inequality: investigates how digital divide and platform economies shape spatial disparities across urban and rural contexts using spatial data, GIS, and AI-enabled methods.

Multidisciplinary approaches to sustainable urban design: integrates environmental evidence, spatial analysis and design-thinking approaches to develop sustainable design strategies.

Jin actively participates in international conferences such as AESOP, ACSP, ISOCARP, UIA, and maintains strong professional links across global planning organisations. She is also a member of the Urban Planning Society of China and a Fellow of China’s Women Planners Committee. Jin has collaborated with local governments on urban regeneration and design projects and has served as an expert advisor to local planning authorities.