Maayan Matz

Maayan Matz Ashkenazi is an anthropologist and urban designer who specializes in psycho-social approaches to spatial design, with a particular focus on health and well-being. Before setting up her own independent consultancy, she established the role of Anthropologist-Urban Designer at the international studio Foster+Partners. With public-sector clients including the GLA, Network Rail, the NHS, and numerous London Boroughs, she combines ethnographic and participatory research methods with spatial design expertise to derive locally-particular equitable responses to place-based design policy and infrastructural intervention. She has a particular specialism in spaces of care, having received her PhD from the LSHTM. She was appointed to the UK’s High Streets Task Force; is a frequently invited public speaker on the topic of relations-centered design; sits on a number of design review panels in London and across the country; and has taught, guest lectured, and critiqued on various Masters courses including the LSHTM, RCA, Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, and Confluence Institute (Paris). As a screenwriter, recent short films on infrastructural inequalities in Palestine and Palliative Care have been officially selected for various international festivals (International Film Festival Rotterdam, RAI, ICA London, Berlin Transmediale).