Labib Azzouz

Labib is a Research Associate in Transport and Energy Innovation at the Transport Studies Unit (TSU) and Environmental Change Institute (ECI). Before this, Labib worked as a Junior Postdoctoral Fellow at the Christ Church College where he joined the University of Oxford’s TSU in December 2020. During his one-year postdoctoral placement, and within TSU’s Everyday Life & Justice theme, Labib worked with Prof. Tim Schwanen and looked at the social sustainability of high-speed railways (HSR). In particular, the empirical research explored the relationship between HSR and social exclusion in Istanbul, Turkey.

Originally, Labib is an architect. In 2014, he won the Chevening scholarship and came to the UK, where he did his MSc Transport Planning at the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds. Later in 2015, the Birmingham Centre for Rail Research and Education (BCRRE) at the University of Birmingham offered him a PhD scholarship and since then, he started to develop a strong interest in high-speed railways (HSRs) systems and topics related to their social, economic, and environmental sustainability.

During his PhD, Labib worked closely with the International Union of Railways (UIC) and was involved in a variety of academic activities including teaching, exams preparation and presentations in both BCRRE and Singapore. His PhD concerned the sustainability performance of high-speed railways around the world. The project revealed best practices and areas of potential improvements. It is benchmarked the sustainability reporting practices of different railways operators.