15–17 July 2026 | Sunway University, Malaysia

In July 2026, Dr Rupert Griffiths presented A Patterned City at the Future Cities Conference 2026 (FCC26), hosted by Sunway University, Malaysia, and organised by the Future Cities Research Institute (FCRI), a joint initiative of Sunway University and Lancaster University.

The conference brought together international researchers and practitioners to explore the future of urban environments through four interconnected themes: Digital Cities, Sustainable Cities, Healthy Cities and Resilient Cities. Under the overarching theme From Living Lab to Urban Impact, the event focused on interdisciplinary research, urban innovation and the translation of research into practice.

Rupert’s presentation, “A Patterned City: Making Urban Ecologies Legible Through Qualitative Methodological Approaches to Environmental Sensing,” explored how environmental sensing and qualitative approaches might be brought together to develop alternative ways of understanding and representing urban environments.

The presentation forms part of our ongoing Making Urban Ecologies Legible research project, which investigates how sensing technologies, environmental data, and creative practice can help make the complex ecological processes and temporalities of urban landscapes more perceptible, challenging predominantly human-centered understandings of cities.

The conference also provided a further opportunity to develop connections with colleagues at Sunway University and explore opportunities for future collaborative research between Malaysia, China and the UK.

We were also delighted that the paper, “A Patterned City: Making Urban Ecologies Legible Through Qualitative Methodological Approaches to Environmental Sensing,” received the Best Paper Award at the conference.

The recognition provides a welcome endorsement of our interdisciplinary approach to environmental sensing and urban ecology, and the potential for bringing qualitative, creative and technological methods together to develop new ways of understanding urban environments.

Conference: Future Cities Conference 2026 – Sunway University

Presentation: 15 July 2026, 15:45–16:00 (online session, VR4)