Zara joined King’s in November 2019 and is currently an Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) in Spatial Data Science in the Department of Geography. Her research specialises in the development and application of computational methods for urban analytics and predictive modelling, drawing on large-scale geospatial, textual, and visual data. Her work seeks to advance the understanding of complex urban processes and to inform planning and policy development, with an empirical focus on the United Kingdom and Indonesia. She is an advocate for the open data and open science movement, promoting transparency, collaboration, and accessibility in research.

Zara is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and the Colouring Indonesia lead for the Colouring Cities Research Programme (open knowledge research initiative). Zara received her PhD in Urban Analytics (awarded with honours, 2020) from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London, an MSc in Urban Planning from the University of Southern California (with distinction, 2013), and a BSc in Urban Planning from Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia (cum laude, 2011).

Research 

Zara’s research is methodologically grounded in the use of artificial intelligence and urban data science. She has employed a range of approaches, including machine/deep learning, natural language processing, geographically weighted regression, spatial interaction and general spatio-temporal models, to address critical urban challenges. Her thematic interests include platform urbanism and climate sustainability. Her previous doctoral research examined the effects of short-term rental platforms (e.g. Airbnb) on housing markets, and her subsequent work has analysed social media data to study public perception and urban dynamics. She has various experiences in managing collaborative international research projects and consortia. She is the PI of the British Academy–funded project Empowering Resilience in a Sinking City (2024–2026). The project has developed an open data platform, a decision support tool, and predictive flood models and simulations in Jakarta, Indonesia. 

Teaching

Zara co-leads the Spatial Data Science Pathway and teaches on the following modules:

Undergraduate

• 4SSG1016 Geography in Action
• 5SSG2061 Geographical Research Skills
• 5SSG2060 Principles of Spatial Data Science

Postgraduate

• 6SSG3077 Applications of Spatial Data Science
• 7CUSMSDA Spatial Data Analysis

PhD supervision

Zara invites prospective PhD candidates to express their interest in research in the following areas:

• Computational approaches to platform urbanism, including Airbnb, housing, tourism, and social media data analytics
• AI and machine learning for urban data science, utilising geospatial, textual, and visual (e.g., street view) big data, with a focus on applications addressing the climate emergency and sustainability, such as research on sinking cities and sustainable mobility.

If you are interested, please send:

1. A brief PhD research proposal
2. Your CV
3. Academic transcript(s)
4. A short statement outlining how you plan to fund your doctoral studies

Further details

See Zara's research profile