About Daniel Black

Daniel is a research director with 20 years professional experience in a wide range of knowledge domains in urban development, corporate governance and planetary health. He is currently: Programme Director of a 5-year £10m research consortium, which aims to Tackle the Root causes Upstream of Unhealthy Urban Development (TRU3D); and co-lead of a 3-year £1m project on the food-energy-water nexus with partners in South Africa, Brazil, Netherlands, Norway and the US. He speaks regularly at events on healthy and sustainable urbanisation. 

Key competencies are:
  • ​​Drawing on breadth of experience to distil insight from complexity
  • Pushing boundaries and bridges specialisms, academia and the real world
  • Conceiving, co-creating and coordinating ideas and opportunities through holistic, creative problem solving
  • Building partnerships between funders, knowledge leaders, and industry to achieve balanced decision-making.​

​Daniel has been Non-Executive Director of his family's multi-award winning development company, Clipper Estates, for over a decade.​
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Daniel has recently stepped down as Chair of the Board of Governors of a school with excellent teaching, but significant management and governance issues, helping to steer it out of insolvency and orchestrate a successful turnaround to Ofsted Good. 

History of db+a

​Since setting up his own practice in 2012, db+a, Daniel has co-led research bids with academic partners to win c. £12m in funding from a wide range of funders including the UK Prevention Research Partnership (led by Medical Research Council), Wellcome Trust, InnovateUK, Natural Environment Research Council, the Urban Land Institute, New Climate Economy, and the Belmont Forum/JPI Europe.

db+a’s research spans multiple disciplines including: urban planning, public health, corporate decision-making, climate change, food, energy, water, waste. Research projects can be found here.

Having spent many years learning about processes and detail downstream in a range of urban disciplines including transport, urban design, building construction and community engagement, Daniel now leads research into decision-making that takes place upstream: governance, partnerships, corporate strategy, risk management. 

Daniel originally studied economics, then urban design, and gained experience in a broad range of urban consultancies (transport, community engagement, town planning, sustainable building construction and assessment) before specialising as an independent in health and sustainability assessment methods for large-scale development.

Affiliations

  • University of Bristol Population Health Sciences (Programme Director, TRU3D) 
  • University of Reading Henley Business School - Real Estate and Planning (Visiting Research Fellow)
  • Healthy Polis (Scientific Advisory Committee Member)
  • Urban Land Institute (Member)
  • Royal Town Planning Institute (Member)
  • MARCH Mental Health Network for Community Assets  (Advisor)
  • Bristol Steiner School (Governor)

In addition to the affiliations above, Daniel works closely with multiple other universities, academics and consultants, particularly at the Universities of Bath (economics, management, policy), Coventry (agro-ecology and water), and UWE Bristol (Health and Applied Sciences). ​