Staff Profile
Dr William Otchere-Darko
Lectureship in Urban Planning
- Email: william.otchere-darko@ncl.ac.uk
- Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 7801
My research generally tracks the interactions between (institutional) planning practices, energy, and environmental politics, especially at key points of transformation: new resource discoveries, projects, infrastructures, policies. My PhD in 2020, at the University of Milan-Bicocca, focused on territorial transformations in emerging oil regions in Ghana and Tanzania. Particularly, how planning institutions attempt to reshape and re-value land and marine spaces, and its incommensurability with extant economic, ecological, and cultural conceptions of territory.
I am also part of a UKRI-funded inter-university project (‘Fraying Ties’), which examines transformations in the UK oil sector. My workstream, led by Dr Gisa Weszkalnys (LSE), uses case study methods to investigate the practices through which oil firms establish and maintain ties to the UK. The first case study explores the shifts in UK’s offshore petroleum licensing regime. The second examines the imaginaries of ‘green recovery’ and ‘just transition’, and its related expertise and propositional politics, focusing on the planned Aberdeen Energy Transition Zone.
Additional and past research interests include: district heating and urban regeneration; planning, low carbon and degrowth futures; as well as the spatial impacts of (new) mobility infrastructures.
As a Lecturer in Urban Planning, I lead two Modules:
- Globalisation and Social Justice Project (TCP8920) – PG
- Spatial Strategies (TCP7021) – PG
I also contribute to other Modules:
- Globalisation and Social Justice (TCP8921) – PG
- Linked Research Project (TCP8025) – PG
- Practice Issues Report (TCP4002) – PG
- Dissertation Mentoring (TCP8099) – PG
- Dissertation Mentoring (TCP3099) – UG
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Articles
- Otchere-Darko W. Scaling-up degrowth: Re-imagining institutional responses to climate change. Urban Studies 2023, epub ahead of print.
- Otchere-Darko W, Ablo A. Labor power, materiality and protests in Ghana’s petroleum and gold mines. International Development Planning Review 2022, 44(3), 289-315.
- Otchere-Darko W. Viewpoint: COVID-19, Spatio-epidemiology and Urban Planning. Town Planning Review 2021, 92(2), 209-213.
- de-Vidovich L, Otchere-Darko W. Residential Segregation and Housing Policies in Vienna: A focus on immigrants of Turkish and former Yugoslavian origins. Territorio 2020, 92, 86-96.
- Otchere-Darko W, Salah-Ovadia J. Incommensurable Languages of Value and Petro-Geographies: Land-Use, Decision-Making and Conflict in South-Western Ghana. Geoforum 2020, 113, 69-80.
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Book Chapters
- Ablo A, Otchere-Darko W. Local Content and Local Participation in the Oil and Gas Industry: Has Ghana Gotten It Right?. In: Acheampong T; Stephens T, ed. Petroleum Resource Management in Africa: Lessons from Ten Years of Oil and Gas Production in Ghana. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2022, pp.291-313.
- Ablo A, Otchere-Darko W. Petroleum Extraction in Africa: A Review of the Local Content Policies for the Oil Industry in Selected Countries. In: Onyango,G, ed. Routledge Handbook of Public Policy in Africa. London: Routledge, 2021, pp.634-644.
- Otchere-Darko W. De-Motorization and Economic Consumer Culture; A Contradiction in the Post-Modern City? Case Studies from Copenhagen and Vienna. In: Stoustrup S, ed. Cities: Changes, Places, Spaces. Vienna: Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, 2017, pp.94-116.