Duncan Crowley is an Irish architect and climate activist exploring community-led ecocities through action research in Dublin, Barcelona, Curitiba and Lisbon. He is the Lisbon coordinator for the 3 year H2020 project UrbanA (Urban Arenas for Sustainable Just Cities) and is a PhD Candidate of Architecture of Contemporary Metropolitan Territories at ISCTE. He holds an MSc in Environment and Development from UFPR, Curitiba, Brazil and current Research Groups include the Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies (DINÂMIA'CET / ISCTE) and Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (CE3C) at the Science Faculty of Lisbon University (FCUL). He is co-President of ECOLISE (European Network for Community-Led Initiatives on Climate Change and Sustainability) council and represented their 2019 climate delegation at COP25. He is part of the Regenesis Institute Regenerative Practitioner community, co-founded the Portuguese DEAL (Doughnut Economics Action Lab) network and is part of the Portuguese Degrowth network. He loves rivers and adventures.

I am an agricultural scientist. My leading research focuses on introducing water-saving approaches and tools into everyday urban (and rural) farming from a participation and value perspective. By engaging society in the planning and managing urban green spaces through urban agriculture, I co-design innovative products, such as the recently developed fermentation-based organic fertilizer from invasive Japanese Knotweed, used to facilitate community engagement in urban agriculture. Through my research, I contribute to understanding how society and ecology interact in an urban environment and how food production is the medium to connect the two. Key references in the field of urban farming: Cvejić et al., 2021: Invasive Plants in Support of Urban Farming: Fermentation-Based Organic Fertilizer from Japanese Knotweed: https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11061232 van der Jagt et al., 2019: Co-creating urban green infrastructure connecting people and nature: A guiding framework and approach: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.09.083 Glavan et al., 2016: Urban Gardening: From Cost Avoidance to Profit Making — Example from Ljubljana, Slovenia: DOI: 10.5772/62301