Damilola Odekunle is a registered urban planner, lecturer, and researcher with over 10 years of experience in urban and community development. Her work spans across urban competitiveness and resilience, urban governance, pro-poor management and governance, community development, social and environmental justice, and urban health. Damilola is particularly interested in understanding societal complexities and in investigating the strategies and interventions that communities, national and sub-national governments, and non-government actors adopt to address them.

She has worked and is currently working on different transdisciplinary projects on social justice, community and urban resilience, sustainable agriculture and conflict (and terrorism), local governance, water politics, global diet and physical activity, etc., with partners from the UN-Habitat, Nigeria, Canada, the United Kingdom, Cameroon, Brazil, Jamaica, South Africa, and Kenya. Through her work, she assesses, co-designs, and recommends policies and interventions based on transdisciplinary and multi-sectoral perspectives and frameworks to transform local communities and cities, reduce inequalities and deprivation, and strengthen individual and collective resilience capacities. Her research output has been presented at conferences in Africa, Asia, and Europe and published in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals.