Ilan Wiesel

Professor Ilan Wiesel is Professor in Urban Geography in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences within the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne. He earned his PhD from the University of Melbourne. Before joining the University of Melbourne in 2016, Wiesel worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the City Futures Research Centre, University of New South Wales, from 2009 to 2016. His academic career has been marked by significant contributions to understanding social and spatial inequalities in urban environments.

Wiesel's research examines the drivers of and responses to social and spatial inequalities in cities, with specific focus areas including housing affordability, social inclusion and exclusion of people with intellectual disability, geographies of elites, and inequalities in the spatial distribution of public urban infrastructures. He currently leads an Australian Research Council Discovery project entitled 'The Disability Inclusive City,' investigating urban inclusivity for people with disabilities. Previously, he completed an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) fellowship in 2014 on Australia's elite neighbourhoods. His scholarship has appeared in prominent journals in urban and social geography, such as Urban Studies, Housing Studies, Environment and Planning A, Cities, Urban Geography, Social and Cultural Geography, and Geoforum. Key works include his 2018 book 'Power, Glamour and Angst: Inside Australia's Elite Neighbourhoods,' published by Palgrave Macmillan, as well as recent articles like 'The role of housing in processes of wealth polarisation and de-polarisation in Australia' (2025), 'More-than-care: People with intellectual disability and emerging vulnerability during pandemic lockdown' (2023), and ''Mainstreaming' Meets 'Choice and Control': Unsettling Neoliberal Imaginaries of Service Choice' (2022). With over 3,000 citations documented on Google Scholar, Wiesel's research has had substantial impact on human geography, urban studies, housing policy, and disability studies, informing discussions on urban equity, neighbourhood dynamics, and metropolitan inequalities.

Professional Email: ilan.wiesel@unimelb.edu.au