City+2025@Oxford Concluded with Great Success!
City+2025@Oxford: The 8th International Conference on Interdisciplinary Urban Studies
Urban Data Analytics and the Polycrisis
September 29th & 30th 2025
School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, the UK
Summary and Photos
We are delighted to announce that the City+2025@Oxford conference concluded with great success, bringing together over 175 attendees coming from 96 universities and institutes across 23 countries/regions. The conference featured a rich and diverse programme, including 138 presentations, 1 plenary panel discussion, 3 plenary keynotes, and 4 workshops. The social programme offered ample opportunities for networking and exchange, with a welcome reception, refreshments and lunches, and a formal dinner at Mansfield College, University of Oxford.
1. Opening
At the opening of the City+2025@Oxford conference, local chair Xiang Ao (DPhil candidate at School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford), presented statistics that highlight the international scope, student-led organisation, engagement with early career researchers, and focus on interdisciplinary urban studies of this year’s conference.
Prof. Melinda Mills (Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford) and Prof. Tim Schwanen (Transport Studies Unit, University of Oxford) joined the opening panel discussion to introduce the crises central to their respective fields, share their insights on the roles of data analytics in addressing the polycrisis, discuss opportunities and challenges for interdisciplinary data analytics, and offer advice on conducting research that generates real-world impact.
Group photos were taken after the opening panel discussion.
2. Presentation Sessions
The conference featured 138 presentations across 23 sessions, covering a wide range of themes, such as mobility and accessibility, urban data and analytics, smart and sustainable cities, governance and spatial economics, climate resilience, social inequality, and urban policy for future resilience. For full details of sessions and presentations in each session, please visit https://www.city-plus.org/city2025oxford-conference-programme-is-now-available/.
3. Keynotes
Prof. Danny Dorling (School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford) delivered a keynote to highlight crises confronting society today based on straightforward statistics and common sense. The keynote was moderated by Dasom Hong (DPhil candidate at School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford).
Prof. Zhifu Mi (The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London) gave an informative talk presenting his research on measuring carbon emissions of cities globally.
Prof. Thanasis Kizos (Department of Geography, University of the Aegean) delivered an insightful and engaging keynote showcasing the significance of rural places in contemporary society and geographical research.
4. Workshops
Workshop on Robustipy
Conveners: Charles Rahal (Associate Professor in Data Science and Informatics at University of Oxford) and Daniel Valdenegro (Senior Data Scientist and Postdoctoral Researcher in Computational Social Science at University of Oxford).
Summary: RobustiPy is an efficient multiversal library with bootstrapping, model selection, averaging, resampling, in-and-out-of-sample analysis (explainable AI), and joint inference tests. It analyses various output spaces, in addition to the control variable space (e.g. multiple dependent variables, estimands of interest, etc). Developed for Python, it is designed to be both accessible and computationally efficient.
Workshop on Mapineq
Conveners: Wenlan Zhang (PhD candidate in Urban Data Analytics at University College London), Douglas Leasure (Senior Researcher and Data Scientist at University of Oxford), and Xiang Ao (DPhil candidate in Economic Geography at University of Oxford)
Summary: The MapIneq Dashboard is a new geospatial dashboard and database designed to explore inequalities across places. This interactive workshop demonstrated how the dashboard helps users visualise patterns, compare regions, and link data across domains such as environment, health, and socioeconomic indicators. Participants also learned how to access data via the MapIneq API for seamless integration into their own analyses.
Elsevier Author Workshop
Conveners: Jess Torr (Elsevier), Sam Mahfoudh (Elsevier), Zhifu Mi (Professor of Climate Change Economics at University College London), Zahratu Shabrina (Associate Professor in Spatial Data Science at King’s College London)
Summary: The Elsevier Author Workshop provided valuable insights into navigating the evolving scholarly publishing landscape and covered best practices for getting research published in top-tier journals.
Workshop on Spatial Econometrics
Conveners: Dasom Hong (DPhil candidate in Financial Geography at University of Oxford), Yan Yu (DPhil candidate at University of Oxford)
Summary: This workshop introduced the foundational concepts of spatial econometrics and provides practical training in the application of basic spatial econometric modelling using R and RStudio.
5. Formal Dinner
Over 90 attendees of the conference enjoyed an elegant and festive formal dinner at Mansfield College, University of Oxford.
6. Award and Closing Ceremony
Congratulations to the winners of the Elsevier Outstanding Presentation Award and Effective Presentation Skills Award! They are from
Table: The Elsevier Outstanding Presentation Award winners
| Presenters | Universities | Countries |
| Mingqing Yin | University of Barcelona | Spain |
| Wensen Luo | Tongji University | China |
| Pietro Mariano | Politecnico di Milano | Italy |
| Mengqiu Cao | University College London | The United Kingdom |
| Camila Ramos | University of Oxford | The United Kingdom |
| Weijia Li | Tianjin University | China |
| Zahratu Shabrina | King’s College London | The United Kingdom |
| Haiyun Xu | Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture | China |
| Jin Rui | King’s College London | The United Kingdom |
| Mohammad Sharif | University of Duisburg-Essen | Germany |
Table: The Effective Presentation Skills Award winners
| Presenters | Universities | Countries |
| Shuli Luo | The Chinese University of Hong Kong | China |
| Mingjie Sheng | Tianjin University | China |
| Moayad Shammut | Khalifa University | The United Arab Emirates |
| Kofoworola Modupe Osunkoya | Tallinn University of Technology | Estonia |
| Anna Goodden | King’s College London | The United Kingdom |
| Amay Arora | The George Washington University | The United States |
| Cansu Çiçek Aydın | Istanbul Technical University | Turkey |
| Jian Song | Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture | China |
| Yan Zhang | Nanjing University | China |
| Jiemei Luo | Harbin Institute of Technology | China |
Next year’s conference, namely, City+2026@Mytilene, will be hosted in July 2026 by University of the Aegean in Greece. The Call for Abstracts would be open in late November, 2025. We look forward to welcoming you here!
7. More photos of City+2025@Oxford
