Online lecture: Affordable Housing and Climate Change

About the event

This event is a free, one-hour online lecture, hosted by Oxford University's Sustainable Urban Development programme. The event will be live-streamed.  

MSc in Sustainable Urban Development alumni Emma Ahmed, Paul Hackett, and Natalie Record will share their experiences with the challenges and opportunities of decarbonising affordable housing across both the global South and global North. Dr Patricia Canelas will moderate the session.

Don’t miss this opportunity to engage in a timely discussion on how housing policy, planning, and design can drive sustainable change.

Tuesday 2 December 2025

18:15 GMT

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About our speakers

Dr Patricia Canelas

Patricia is Course Director for the MSc in Sustainable Urban Development at Oxford Lifelong Learning. Trained as an architect and planner, she brings a solid grounding in the built environment, enabling her to address housing form, retrofitting, land-use change, and the integration of climate resilience into urban redevelopment. Her international research experience—spanning the UK, Portugal, the Netherlands, China, and the United States—offers valuable comparative insights that extend beyond a single urban context.

Emma Ahmed

Emma is an IFC EDGE Expert and seasoned advisor with more than 15 years of international experience driving sustainable urban development and climate-smart investment across Africa, Asia, and the UK. She specializes in structuring innovative green finance vehicles, mobilizing blended capital, and aligning investor requirements with policy and market realities. Emma has led high-impact assignments for IFC, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank, including green building market assessments, affordable housing finance programs, and renewable energy infrastructure initiatives. She has directed large-scale funds such as the £60M CLIFF ( Community-Led Infrastructure Finance Facility) blended-finance platform and spearheaded the creation of a $75M green housing investment fund through Green City Homes International.  Emma completed the MSc in 2023.

Paul Hackett CBE

Paul is Chief Executive of Southern Housing, a London based housing association that owns and manages 80,000 homes.  Paul is an Honorary Professor at the UCL Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction.  He is a former member of the Homes for Londoners Board, advising the Mayor on London’s housing strategy.  Between 2017-2019 Paul Chaired the G15, representing London’s largest housing associations.  Paul is a Fellow of the RICS, the CIOB and CIH.  He completed the MSUD in 2022.

Natalie Record

Natalie is an Urban Planner specialising in the digital transformation of the built environment. She works with decision-makers across public and private sectors to embed systems thinking, data, and innovation into design and business models to create healthier, more climate-resilient future homes and neighbourhoods. Natalie has previously led on national data and digital planning policy reforms at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and Connected Places Catapult’s £5 million Homes for Healthy Ageing programme, overseeing the design and delivery of housing retrofit testbeds to identify how health outcomes and climate resilience could be improved for older adults across the UK through harnessing data and innovation. In her current role as Senior Partner at TPXimpact (although currently on maternity leave), Natalie supports MHCLG in advancing data and AI initiatives and shaping policies to enable data-informed decision-making and deliver better outcomes for people and places. Natalie completed the MSc in 2020.