Professor Katharine Willis

Katharine S. Willis is Professor of Smart Cities and Communities in the School of Art, Design and Architecture at University of Plymouth, UK. Her research expertise includes smart cities, smart villages, digital technologies and the role of space and place. Her research explores how new technologies can create ways for people and communities to engage with place, with a particular focus on social and digital inclusion. She has experience working collaboratively through participatory methods with marginalized groups and in deprived neighbourhoods in UK, India and Brazil.

She has published widely on the topic; she is co-author with Alex Aurigi of two key Routledge volumes on Smart Cities, and the monograph Netspaces: Space and Place in a Networked World.  She has received funding from AHRC, ESRC, EPSRC  and EU Horizon 2020 for a range of research projects. In 2024 she is a Visiting Fellow at the Western Academy for Advanced Research (WAFAR), Western University, Canada.