The Academy of Social Sciences has conferred Fellowships on Professor Elisabete A Silva in recognition of her contribution to social science.
The Academy of Social Sciences (https://acss.org.uk/) is composed of individual Fellows, Learned Societies, and a number of affiliates who together form a community of around 90,000 social scientists. The Academy seeks to promote the social sciences in the United Kingdom for public benefit.
Elisabete A Silva is Professor of Spatial Planning at the Department of Land Economy, Director of the Lab of Interdisciplinary Spatial Analysis (LISA), University of Cambridge (https://www.landecon.cam.ac.uk/directory/esilva), Senior Member of Robinson College (www.robinson.cam.ac.uk) and a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) (www.rtpi.org.uk). She also lectures and is the course coordinator of ‘Urban and Environmental Planning I’ and ‘Spatial Analysis and Modelling.’
Silva’s research focuses on the application of new technologies to spatial planning, in particular city and metropolitan dynamic modelling through time. The LISA lab which she directs, is a Geographic Information Lab that brings together data, software and expertise for spatial analysis in Land Economy's related subjects.
At present Silva is engaged in a €5 million EU-funded Horizon project called eMOTIONAL Cities (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/945307). The project seeks to characterise urban health challenges and inequalities through investigating the interactions between people and urban spaces, with a view to enhancing citizens' health. In particular, the project assesses our neurobiological signals which control our emotions and decision making, while we are interacting with urban environments. The research will lead to innovative eMOTIONAL city mapping that will be produced from spatial analysis on social and health data and neuroscience experiments. To do this, the project will draw on urban planning and design, neuroscience, data science and technology.
Silva said: “I am delighted that my work has been recognised by the Academy and feel that I would like to pay tribute to those that helped me during the past 30 years, including my PhD students, colleagues in research projects, former PhD supervisors, colleagues that mentored me and my family for all their support and love. I will use this recognition to promote the use of spatial analysis, modelling and planning in the social sciences.”
