About
Mahda Foroughi,
Urban Policy Making Consultant
Making Our Citiies Sustainable Together
I am a designer, planner, and researcher whose work meets the intersection of Architecture, Heritage Studies, Urban planning, Computer Science, and Digital Humanities. I have experience in the application of various participatory tools to reach inclusive and sustainable urban neighborhoods in smart cities. I focus on public participation through social media data analytics (using big data analytic tools and Artificial Intelligence), living labs, serious gamification (Minecraft, playing games), and 3D visualization. Most recently, I conducted Ph.D. research at TU Delft (The Netherlands) developing an Artificial Intelligence model to reveal different stakeholder groups’ perceptions of the cultural significance of heritage properties to facilitate inclusive policy-making
Work exprience
I have worked as a designer, lecturer, and consultant since 2016 in different universities, research institutions, and companies in Iran, Netherlands, and Germany. You can find part of my work experience on the website, but for more extensive information, please refer to my CV.
Researcher
PhD candidate
2019-present
TU Delft
​As a PhD researcher, after choosing and applying public participation methods, I formulated policy recommendations and strategies to use passive natural ventilation systems in Yazd, Iran (Windcatchers). Accordingly, I gained knowledge on the latest debates in heritage studies and deployed a broader heritage values system, combining sustainability pillars with cultural values, exploiting heritage resources for greater conservation and sustainability, considering both tangible dimension (adaptive reuse and higher resource efficiency) and the social dimension (diversity, inclusion, and accessibility). Besides strengthening such theoretical background, I acquired skills on qualitative data analysis methods such as manual and automated content analysis using Nvivo and Natural Language Processing techniques, and social media data analytics.
Lecturer
Guest lecturer
2019-present
(post)graduate students
TU Delft
As a guest lecturer, I organized several lectures and hands-on experiences in the format of workshops for undergraduate and graduate students. The content was related to value-based design, cultural significance, content analysis and coding techniques, data analytic tools, databases, artificial models to code heritage values and attributes, social media analysis tools, and data management.
Guest lecturer
2019-present
students, scholars, professionals
Europeana
RWTH Aachen University
In the workshops, I presented an introduction to coding values and attributes from text documents based on two theoretical frameworks (Veldpaus, 2015; Pereira Roders, 2007). Besides, I explained the stages of an innovative project which codes social media data using Artificial Intelligence to reveal the cultural significance of urban properties, with a focus on built heritage.
Consultant
Consultant
2017-2019
Nazar Research Center
​I was head of the urban planning team in a living lab project focusing on a participatory urban rehabilitation project in Dulab, a historic neighborhood (Tehran, Iran). I was responsible for choosing and applying participatory tools and techniques, including focus group meetings, workshops, and urban gamification. I was also responsible for organizational and managerial tasks (organizing, leading, controlling) to facilitate collaboration between involved teams including public authorities, companies, and researchers from other fields of study.
Awards
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member of the UNESCO Young Professional Forum of 2023
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Faro Convention Ambassador of 2022: Sustainable Heritage and Digitalization, Faro, Portugal (The Council of Europe Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society)
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Doctoral scholarship, Technical University of Delft (€110,000)
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Full scholarship for Landscape and Urban Planning program at University of Tehran
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Full scholarship for Architecture engineering program at University of Tehran