Diwen Tan is a PhD candidate (since 2021) at the Spatial Planning and Strategy section, Department of Urbanism at TU Delft. Her current research project is focused on the socio-ecological values of Chinese urban villages as lived spaces.
She has particular interests in cultural landscapes and inclusive urbanism, which are rooted in her education and career development. She completed her B.Sc. in Physics at Hunan Normal University, China and M.Sc. in Sustainable Energy Systems at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She then worked at the United Nations Environment Programme for 6 years, responsible for communication, partnership building, and project implementation in relation to the environmental and climate change issues in the Global South; for example, she had managed a GEF-funded project EbA South and worked intensively on ecosystem-based climate change adaptation in Nepal, Mauritania, Seychelles, and China. After this, she pursued an advanced M.Sc. in Human Settlements at KU Leuven in Belgium (graduating magna cum laude in 2020).