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Staff Profile

Danny Oswell

Lecturer in Planning

  • Telephone: 0191 208 6000
Background

I have enjoyed a highly varied and successful career in music, Housing Management, Housing Policy and Strategy, Regeneration, University Teaching/Research, Corporate Management and Private Consultancy. I have worked at all levels, in both private and public sectors, including CEO and non-executive Director roles. Key recent career highlights include

  • Working as School Academic Lead for Employability and Enterprise; working with colleagues in the Careers Service to refresh our Employability and Enterprise Strategy
  • Covering the role of School Director of Education during semester 1 of the academic year 2024/25
  • Collaborating with senior colleagues to grow both the quality and range of my research output
  • Delivering a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, including core content on economics, as well as leading on several regeneration and urban design modules
  • Successfully operating my own Community Regeneration Consultancy, delivering significant new community capacity in the Town of Ashington from 2010 onwards.
  • Actively shaping the progress of Isos Housing Ltd and Isos Developments Ltd (now Karbon Homes) as a Board Member/Director, through a period of huge organisational change.
  • Setting up and then fully establishing the Tyne and Wear Strategic Housing Partnership. Delivering £23m of strategic housing spend across the five authorities.


Research

I have three main areas of research interest right now. The first is a collaboration with Dr N. A. Powe, looking at the role community enterprises might play in helping to facilitate place-based leadership, in areas suffering from decline and degeneration. The second is a collaboration with Dr Georgiana Varna and Dr Michael Crilly, looking at how Experimental Urbanism might help us better understand how to utilise and develop public space, in the post-Covid19 "new normal." The third is a collaboration with Dr Peter Lamb of Newcastle University Business School, looking at the concept of liminality in social and community entrepreneurship, so that we might better understand how to support and stimulate such activities in a variety of community-led regeneration settings.


Publications


Oswell, D. & Varna, G. (2024). Chain reactions: can experimental urbanism provide the formula for productive, place-based, change? Town Planning Review, 95 (4), 435-447. https://doi.org/10.3828/tpr.2024.15


Varna, G. and Oswell, D. (2023), ‘Building the buzz in Blakelaw: re-igniting the public realm of Britain’s peripheral urban estates in the new normal’, in E. Lissandrello, J. Sørensen,K. Olesen and R. N. Steffansen (eds), The ‘New Normal’ in Planning, Governance and Participation,Cham, Springer, 57–68.


Powe, N. A. and Oswell, D. (2022), ‘Planning for town centre “smart-decline”/ “rightsizing”:a new lens for strategy development and research?’, Planning Theory & Practice, 23, 499–517.


Varna, G., & Oswell, D. (2021). Towards a stronger quality-of-place agenda in the ‘new normal.’ Town Planning Review, 92(1), 107–114. https://doi.org/10.3828/tpr.2020.71




Teaching


I am very passionate about teaching and learning and have a wide range of teaching responsibilities. These include working as Module Leader on the following:


TCP8917 - Regenerating Places

TCP1019 - Economics of Development (undergraduate)

TCP8918 - Regenerating Places Project

TCP7023 - Economics of Development (postgraduate)

TCP3059 - Strategies Into Action: Urban Design


I also teach into and/or act as moderator for a further range of modules, including:

TCP3058 - Strategies Into Action: Planning

TCP4002 - Practice Issue Report

TCP4003 - Practice Issues Presentation

TCP8950 - Valuation and Appraisal For Planning

TCP8953 - Politics of Urban Government

TCP1025 - Social Worlds

TCP2025 - Researching Local Economics

TCP2005 - Houses and Homes

ARC8115 - Design Studio

ARC8069 - Housing Alternatives

TCP8090 - Principles and Practice of Urban Design


I also mentor students through both undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations on the following modules:

TCP3099 - Undergraduate Dissertation

TCP8099 - Postgraduate Dissertation


I also run the Urban Planning PARTNERS Summer School in July of each year. And I deliver a range of outreach activities, including the Bitesize Uni events in Urban Planning that the University offers to Year 12 students. I also support a number of Post Offer Holder Open Days to prospective students throughout the year.


I also currently work as Academic Lead for Employability and Enterprise within the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. And in semester 1 of the 2024/25 academic year, I covered the role of Director of Education for APL.



 

Publications