Tom Jefferies is Professor of Future Cities in the School of Natural and Built Environment, a prize-winning architect and urban designer. Prior to joining Queen’s University Belfast Tom was Head of the Manchester School of Architecture, and Birmingham School of Architecture. He has taught, lectured and examined internationally. Tom’s research investigates relationships between culture, space, landscape process to propose new forms of contemporary urbanism. Expertise in architecture, urban design, landscape, master planning and design codes, architectural history, theory and context, sustainability and heritage is a basis for developing symbiotic relationships between research and inter-disciplinary practice.

Tom has significant experience in running exploratory design-based work to generate new understanding of lived space. This acknowledges the underpinning importance of technologies (and the similarities we can observe in these across diverse regions and places), whilst critically addressing the importance of culturally generated ways of using and applying and embodying these technologies.

Current work explores complex issues of dispersed and distributed urbanisms in low density areas and dynamic territorial contexts. This explores case studies in the UK/Republic of Ireland Border, Scottish Highlands and Cornwall to propose new globally applicable models of urban operation and architectural spatial types. The importance of built and cultural heritage as concrete manifestations of collective identity can be seen as being challenged by the ephemeral and enveloping quality of the digital world. Challenging this assumption, the work undertaken visualises the interplay between Smart and traditional space and built form to propose testable models for future development and implementation of people centred space as a central theme.

Collaborative partners have included Satellite Applications Catapult, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, NHS Highlands, and Cornwall and Scilly Isles Local Enterprise Partnership, and the Irish Central Border Area network. I was principal investigator for Manchester Metropolitan University in CityVerve, the £10M SMART city/internet of things demonstrator project led by Manchester City Council and Cisco.