Samantha Stratton-Short is a graduate of the Bartlett School of Architecture. She is a specialist consultant at Arup.
Samantha joined the Centre in 2007 to pursue research into sustainable development in the negotiations for planning of major water infrastructure. Samantha studied Environmental Design and architecture in Denmark and the United States and did her graduate work and qualification at the Bartlett in the UK in 1998. Since joining Arup as a project manager in 2002, she has worked on numerous major projects including Heathrow Terminal 5, Battersea Power Station and Upper Thames Reservoir. She currently leads the project consulting team and founded and heads Arup’s Stakeholder Engagement and Consultation business area.
Samantha has worked on post-disaster reconstruction in Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, primarily advising on organisational and programme issues of scaling up after large-scale disasters. As a specialist consultant within Arup, Sam currently advises the Rockefeller’s Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network, the development of the Disaster Resource Partnership for the World Economic Forum, and Triple-S, a program to improve rural water service delivery, being piloted in Uganda and Ghana and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Sam has returned to academia part-time to pursue research into sustainable development through stakeholder engagement in the planning of major water infrastructure. She is currently looking at governance in the planning process through unofficial networks of stakeholders. Her research projects are currently in Laos, Africa, Europe and the United States. The research involves the subjects of policy planning, social network analysis, network governance, civil society organizations, water governance, institutional and behavioral economics, and the management of common pool resources.