Prof Nigel Mehdi

Director, DPhil in Sustainable Urban Development Programme

Departmental Lecturer in Sustainable Urban Development

Fellow, Kellogg College, Oxford

Biography

Nigel is the Director for the DPhil in Sustainable Urban Development, a Departmental Lecturer in the Department for Continuing Education, and a Fellow of Kellogg College.

He is an Honorary Professor in the School of Computer Science at the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, at the University of Birmingham, and Programme Director for the National Artificial Intelligence Programme for the United Arab Emirates.

An urban economist by background, Nigel is a chartered surveyor working at the intersection of information technology, the built environment, and urban sustainability. Nigel gained his PhD in Real Estate Economics from the London School of Economics. He also holds postgraduate qualifications in Software Engineering, Politics, Development and Democratic Education, Sustainable Development, Digital Education and Professional Education and Training.

Prof Mehdi has a long-standing involvement in professional education both as a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, where he was Chair of the UK Education Standards Board, and with the Institution of Engineering and Technology, where he is a member of the Accreditation Team for UK Engineering Council programmes in higher education. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and of the Higher Education Academy.

Nigel was previously a Visiting Fellow in the Spatial Economics Research Centre at the London School of Economics, a Visiting Scholar at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and a member of the National Readers Panel for the Queen’s Anniversary Prizes for Higher and Further Education.

Teaching

Prof Mehdi is Director of the DPhil in Sustainable Urban Development, and a Departmental Lecturer on the Master's in Sustainable Urban Development with responsibility for the economics stream since its inception. He was Director of the Masters course between 2017 and 2022. In 2017 he was awarded OUSU Outstanding Tutor within the Department for Continuing Education. Outside of the Department, he teaches on the Software Engineering programme at the University of Oxford, and beyond the University he teaches real estate economics and property technology at Oxford Brookes University. Since 2018 he has been Course Director for the UAE Artificial Intelligence Programme, now at the University of Birmingham, and for the newly established Foundations for Chief AI Officers of the United Arab Emirates federal government.

Graduate Research Supervision

Nigel welcomes applications to the DPhil in Sustainable Urban Development (DSUD) Programme from outstanding individuals wishing to undertake doctoral research on real estate sustainability, spatial big data and smart cities, digital economies, urban resilience, fiscal federalism and local government finance, applications of artificial intelligence to the urban realm, and urban analytics.

Research & Consultancy

Prof Mehdi acts as a consultant for both public and private sector organisations, including government, NGOs and global corporations. His research interests span the field of real estate economics and applications of digital technologies to the urban realm. This includes the measurement, reporting and computer modelling of sustainability in the built environment, spatial big data, intelligent buildings and smart cities. He is also interested in the application of digital education to the challenge of Education for Sustainability.

Recent publications

2025. Principles of Property Investment & Pricing. (co-authored with Will Fraser and Rory Young) 3rd Edition. Macmillan Education. Forthcoming.

2024. Executive Outlook on the Future of Privacy, 2030. Mykhnenko, V., Howard, D. & Mehdi N. Global Centre on Healthcare & Urbanisation, Kellogg College, Oxford. February 2024

2024. Executive Outlook on the Future of Governance, 2033 and Beyond. Mykhnenko, V., Howard, D. & Mehdi N.  Global Centre on Healthcare & Urbanisation, Kellogg College, Oxford. February 2024

2023. Executive Outlook on the Future of Money, 2033 and Beyond. Mykhnenko, V., Howard, D. & Mehdi N.  Global Centre on Healthcare & Urbanisation, Kellogg College, Oxford. October 2023

2023. Executive Outlook on the Future of ESG, 2032 and Beyond. Mykhnenko, V., Howard, D. & Mehdi N.  Global Centre on Healthcare & Urbanisation, Kellogg College, Oxford. September 2022

2022.  Understanding forced internal displacement in Ukraine: insights and lessons for today’s crises. Mykhnenko, V., Delahaye, E. & Mehdi N. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 38(3): 699-716.

2022. Executive Outlook on the Future of Work, 2030 and Beyond. Mykhnenko, V., Howard, D. & Mehdi N.  Global Centre on Healthcare & Urbanisation, Kellogg College, Oxford. March 2022

2022. An Experience Report of Executive-Level Artificial Intelligence Education in the United Arab Emirates. Johnson, D., Mehdi, N., El-Bouri, R., et al.  arXiv: 2201.01281. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. February 2022.2021. Executive Perspectives on Cities, 2030. Mykhnenko, V., Howard, D. & Mehdi N.   Global Centre on Healthcare & Urbanisation, Kellogg College, Oxford. October 2021

2021. Implementation of Accelerated Policy-Driven Sustainability Transitions: Case of Bharat Stage 4 to 6 Leapfrogs in India. Khodke, A., Watabe, A., & Mehdi N.  Sustainability 13 (8). March 2021.

2020. Blockchain: an Emerging Opportunity for Surveyors? Mehdi, N. RICS Insight Paper, March 2020.

2018. Big Data, Smart Cities, Intelligent Buildings – Surveying in a Digital World. Mehdi, N. RICS Insight Paper, March 2018.