Dr Iris Levin is an architect, urban planner, teacher and researcher. She has a passion for working with diverse communities and understanding the effects of migration on the built environment. She is interested in housing, social planning, migration and social diversity in cities.
Iris is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sustainability and Urban Planning. She gained her PhD from the University of Melbourne and joined RMIT University in 2021 after working at Swinburne University, in the community sector and Flinders University. Iris has a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning and a B.Arch. in Architecture, gained from the Technion, Israel.
Iris’s research focuses on issues around housing, the built environment, migration, diversity, disadvantaged communities and social mix in the city. She often uses qualitative and visual methodologies and analyses and has experience in longitudinal research. Iris is the lead editor of an edited book Migration and Urban transitions in Australia (Palgrave, 2022). In 2016 she published Migration, Settlement, and the Concept of House and Home (Routledge), focusing on migrant settlement practices in their homes in Australia and Israel, and since then has worked on research projects dealing with public housing, urban renewal projects and social mix, urban belonging and public urban space, and neighbour relations in high-density housing arrangements.
Iris has published extensively for academic and industry audiences and has presented her work in different forums and conferences. She has taught various undergraduate and postgraduate subjects in planning, social diversity and the built environment. Iris often contributes to community engagement panels and forums supporting local councils in engaging residents.
Housing Policy
Research in urban planning
Social urban planning
Urban diversity and migration
Housing, social mix, social planning, social housing, migration and urban diversity
Acknowledgement of Country
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.