Emmanuel Kofi Gavu (Dr.-Ing.)

Biography

Emmanuel Kofi Gavu (Dr.-Ing.) Pollman (postdoctoral) Fellow in Real Estate and Urban Development at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design for the 2022-2023 academic year. He is also a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Land Economy, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Kumasi, Ghana. He completed his PhD in Spatial Planning at the TU Dortmund University in Germany. He holds an MSc in GIS for Urban Planning and Management from the University of Twente in The Netherlands, as well as a BSc in Land Economy from KNUST Ghana.

His main fields of teaching, research and professional interests are the application of geographical information systems in urban management, real estate and housing market analysis. He has published in the areas of hedonic modelling, housing market dynamics and real estate education.

He has taken up lectureship and Research Assistantship positions at the TU Dortmund University, where he has taught participants about housing markets, affordable housing and English for professional development. He has taught undergraduate courses (in “Land Economics”, “Principles of Valuation I & II” and “Real Estate Development”); graduate courses (in “Urban and Rural Land Economics” “Property Asset Management and Maintenance”); as well as research supervision roles.
In his previous roles, he has collaborated and motivated his team towards improvements to ensure students and colleagues thrive in an environment that strives for excellence. He is progressive-minded and in tune with current developments within the field of housing, real estate, urban planning and related fields. He has proven to be an effective communicator with strong critical-thinking abilities. He is a three-time winner of the AfRES manuscript prize (2012, 2015 and 2017) and a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) and Erasmus Mundus scholar.

Kofi is a Short Term Consultant for the World Bank, board member of the African Real Estate Society (AfRES), Chair of the Future Leaders of the African Real Estate Society (FLAfRES), Co-Chair of the AfRES 2022 Conference in Accra Ghana, and professional member of the Ghana Institution of Surveyors (MGhIS).

His research focuses on rental housing structure, dynamics, and pricing of residential housing units within the global south. Kofi is a reviewer of multiple journals and has published book chapters and significant papers in journals such as Housing Policy Debate, Journal of Housing and Built Environment, International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis, GeoJournal and Resources Policy.


Qualifications
*Doctor of Engineering, Spatial Planning (summa cum laude), Technische Universität Dortmund Germany – 2020
*MSc Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (Urban Planning and Management), University of Twente, Faculty of Geo-Information Science & Earth Observation (ITC) Enschede, The Netherlands – 2010
*BSc Land Economy (First Class Honours), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Kumasi Ghana – 2007