About us

Guided by a leadership team grounded in practice, we understand the spatial implications of how people inhabit a city.

Parramatta square at night lights

Our role…

Our competitive advantage

We connect those with insights with those that shape and deliver city outcomes, ensuring a practical application for policy, change and impact that ultimately benefits the communities around us.

  • We are independent intermediaries to ensure relevancy and impact.
  • Our leadership team is grounded in practice
  • We understand the spatial implications of how people inhabit a city.
  • We bridge academic insight with real world challenges, we focus on practical insights, diverse voices and transdisciplinary collaborations.
  • We apply a systems approach to problem solving.

Our team

Our team is expanding! We will soon have an Associate Director First Nations joining us.

Professor Peter Poulet

Professor Peter Poulet is the founding Director of the Cities Institute. With a diverse background that encompasses architecture, visual arts and civic planning, he brings a unique blend of industry experience, government expertise, academic insight and creative vision to his role.

Peter currently holds the position of Central City District Commissioner for the Greater Cities Commission. Prior to this, he served as the NSW Government Architect from 2012 to 2018.  

Hannah Bolito

Hannah Bolitho is Manager of Strategy & Business at the Cities Institute. Trained as an architect and urban designer, she brings a wealth of experience in public policy and planning. Hannah has spent the past eight years focused on strategic planning policy for the City of Sydney. Prior to that, she was a key team member at the NSW Government Architect’s Office.

Expanding her reach beyond her primary responsibilities, Hannah also holds the position of Oceania Regional Hub Lead for the Accelerating City Equity Project, affiliated with the International Society for Urban Health.

Sarah Ford

Sarah Ford is Business Administrator for the Cities Institute. She has been working at the UNSW for over 20 years. She is also currently an Administrative Officer at the Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity.

Scientia Fellow Dr Jinhee Kim

Dr Jinhee Kim is Scientia Fellow at the Cities Institute. Her research interests include understanding the complexities of urban health paradigms relevant to addressing the spatial impacts of urban environments on human health. She applies her research findings in developing real-world transdisciplinary action that engages stakeholders from academic and non-academic backgrounds and across various disciplines and sectors. Prior to joining UNSW, she has worked in all levels of government with a focus on healthy cities and health impact assessment as tools to prioritise health equity in urban policies. 

Jinhee serves as Editor-in-Chief of Urban Health Review, a peer-reviewed journal for the Korean Academy of Urban Health, and as a member of the Academic Committee for the Alliance for Healthy Cities.

Scientia Fellow Dr Naama Blatman

Dr Naama Blatman is an urban and political geographer whose research spans Israel/Palestine and Australia. She applies a comparative lens and collaborative research practice with Indigenous communities to interrogate the histories, lived realities and futures in-the-making of settler colonial cities. Using archival and ethnographic methods, Naama examines how cities are planned and re/developed in such sites as housing, prisons, and railways, considering enduring yet dynamic structures of settler colonial and Indigenous urbanisms. 

Naama is an alumnus of the Urban Studies Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2020-2023). She previously held the positions of Research Theme Fellow at Western Sydney University (2022-2024) and Lecturer in Urban Geography at The University of Sydney (2019-2022). Prior to completing her PhD, she worked for several years in Human Rights and Palestinian non-for-profit organisations in Israel. Outside of her academic work, Naama is an avid yoga practitioner who enjoys rock climbing and exploring new bush walks in and around the city with her two kids and slightly crazy working dog.