ESRC Council member
Professor Cecilia Wong is a member of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Council.
Professor Wong is Professor of Spatial Planning, Co-Director of Policy@Manchester and Director of the Spatial Policy and Analysis Lab at the University of Manchester. She is a chartered town planner and had practice experience in Liverpool City Council and Cleveland County Council before joining academia.
Professor Wong’s research expertise includes:
- strategic planning
- spatial policy monitoring
- spatial analysis
- urban and regional development
- housing and infrastructure planning
Her research has been mainly focused on UK spatial development and working on research projects in China and other development contexts. She has recently been working on a number of collaborative grants, including:
- a five-year consortium project on ‘Tackling root causes upstream of unhealthy urban development’ funded by the UK Prevention Research Partnership
- a three-year project on ‘Eco-Urbanisation: Promoting Sustainable Development in Metropolitan Regions of China’ funded by the ESRC-National Natural Science Foundation of China Newton Fund Collaborative Research
Her academic career has been closely associated with applied policy analysis and research that straddles the divide between academia and policy communities. Some of her recent roles include:
- Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences
- Fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute
- Chair of the UK REF 2021’Architecture, Built Environment and Planning’ Sub-panel
- Chair of the UK 2070 Commission on Regional Inequalities
- Commissioner of the UK Productivity Commission
- Member of UK National Infrastructure Commission’s Levelling Up Expert Panel
- Member of the UK Digital Planning Task Force
- Independent Academic Panel member of the City, Devolution and Growth Deal for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Examples of previous roles included:
- Chair of the Research Approvals Committee and Data Acquisition Committee of the ESRC Urban Big Data Centre
- expert panel member of the Labour Party’s Independent Housing Review
- expert panel member of the European Commission’s Urban Audit II
- expert group member of the UN-Habitat City Prosperity Index (Middle East Regional Centre of Best Practices and Local Leadership Programme)
Last updated: 31 March 2025