Gideon Baffoe
Lecturer (Assistant Professor)

Profile

Biography

Gideon Baffoe is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Environment and Development at the Department of Environment and Geography. He is also a member of the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre (IGDC). Gideon is an interdisciplinary scholar with a background in development and sustainability studies. His research experience has centred on socio-economic and ecological systems resilience. He aims to understand and contribute to the processes that enhance the development and sustainability of socioecological and economic systems. He has analysed, for instance, how socio-cultural and natural environments interact and shape livelihood systems and outcomes in urban and rural landscapes in Africa.

Prior to joining University of York, he worked as a research fellow at the University of Glasgow and United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS, Tokyo). At Glasgow, his work focused on investigating sustainable urban neighbourhoods in fast rising global south cities of Cape Town, Kigali, Dar es Salam, Datong, Manila and Delhi.  His work at UNU-IAS was on urban sustainability, where he applied the solution scanning technique to develop a framework to aid the implementation of SDG 9 and 11 in three African countries (Ghana, South Africa and Tanzania).

Gideon has wide research interests, including but not limited to sustainable cities and neighbourhoods, urbanization, poverty and inequality, livelihood and environmental change, climate change, ecosystem services, agricultural development and food security, and natural resource governance, among others. He has a strong methodological expertise in combining both quantitative and qualitative techniques in socioeconomic and ecological research. His work has been published in leading journals, including Sustainability Science, Ecological Indicators, Cities and Habitat International.

Publications

Selected publications

Selected peer-reviewed articles

Baffoe, G. (2023). Neoliberal urban development and the polarization of urban governance. Cities, 143, 104570

Baffoe, G. and Kintrea, K. (2023). Towards Understanding the Landscapes of Neighbourhood Research: An Insight from Bibliometric Analysis. Sustainability, 14(5), 3115.

Baffoe, G. and Roy, S. (2022). Colonial legacies and contemporary urban planning practices in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Planning Perspective, 1 – 24.

Baffoe, G., Zhou, X., Moinuddin, M., Somanje, A. N., Kuriyama, A., Mohan, G., Saito, O. and Takeuchi, K. (2021). Urban–rural linkages: Effective solutions for achieving sustainable development in Ghana from an SDG interlinkage perspective. Sustainability Science. DOI: 10.1007/s11625-021-00929-8

Baffoe, G., Ahmad, S. and Bhandari, R. (2020). The road to sustainable Kigali: a contextualized analysis of the challenges. Cities, 105. 

Baffoe, G. (2020). Rural-urban studies: a macro analyses of the scholarship terrain. Habitat International, 98, 102156.

Baffoe, G. (2019). Understanding the Neighborhood Concept and its Evolution. Environment and Urbanization Asia, 10(2): 393 – 402.

Baffoe, G. (2018). Exploring the utility of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in ranking livelihood activities for effective and sustainable rural development interventions in developing countries. Evaluation and Program Planning, 72, 197-204.

Baffoe, G. and Matsuda, H. (2018). A perception-based estimation of the ecological impacts of livelihood activities: The case of rural Ghana. Ecological Indicators 93: 424-433.

Baffoe, G. and Matsuda, H. (2017). An empirical assessment of rural livelihood assets from a gender perspective: Evidence from Ghana. Sustainability Science, 12(3):815 - 828.

Baffoe, G. and Matsuda, H. (2017). An Empirical Assessment of Households’ Livelihood Vulnerability: The Case of Rural Ghana. Social Indicators Research. 140(3): 1225-1257.

Selected book chapters

Denabo, J., Baffoe, G., Dam Lam, R., Karanja, A., Naidoo, M., Ahmed, A., Jarzebski, M.P., Saito, O., Fukushi, K., Takeuchi, K., Gasparatos, A., 2020. Sustainability challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in Gasparatos, A., Ahmed, A., Naidoo, M., Karanja, A., Fukushi, K., Saito, O., Takeuchi, K., (Eds.), Sustainability Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa I: Continental Perspectives and Insights from Western and Central Africa. Springer, Berlin.

Baffoe, G. (2019). Rethinking Rural development: Application of Multifunctionality (MF) Theory in Understanding and Measuring Rural Wellbeing and Sustainability. In Nagao, M., Broadhurst, J. L., Edusah, S. and Awere, G. K (Eds), Sustainable development in Africa: Concepts and Methodological Approaches. Spears Media Press, Denver.

Selected conference presentations

Baffoe, G. (2023). Urban development at the age of neoliberal planning: Insights from Dar es Salam. Development Studies Association Conference (DSA23), June 28 – 30, University of Reading, Reading, UK (oral presentation).

Baffoe, G. (2023). The ecological impacts of local livelihood activities. University of Toyama Sustainability Conference 2023, January 20 – 21, Toyama, Japan (virtual presentation).

Baffoe, G., Sohail, A. and Bhandari, R. (2021). Rethinking sustainable urban development: the case of Kigali, Rwanda. RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, London, August 31 - September 3, 2021.

Baffoe, G. (2020). Neighbourhood Matters in African Cities. A paper presented at the 10th World Urban Forum (WUF10), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 8-13 Feb 2020 (oral presentation)

Baffoe, G. (2019). The political economy of urban neighbourhoods in post-colonial Kigali city. A paper presented at the Tianjin Forum, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Tianjin Binhai, China, October 19 – 20, 2019 (oral presentation).

Baffoe, G. and Kintrea, K. (2019). Towards understanding the scholarship terrain of neighbourhood research: A bibliometric analysis. A paper presented at the 49th Urban Affairs Association (UAA) Annual International Conference, Luskin Conference Center, Los Angeles, USA, April 23 – 27, 2019 (oral presentation).

Teaching

Other teaching

Teaching

Equitable and Sustainable Futures (ESF 1): Sites of Global Change (convenor)

Advanced Issues in Global Development (convenor)

Research Methods in Global Development (co-convenor)

Global Development International Field Course (co-convenor)

Contributing

Issues and Skills in Global Development

Foundational Issues in Global Development

Megacities and Urbanization

Global Challenges