Dr Suraya Ismail

Suraya Ismail (PhD) is Director of Research at Khazanah Research Institute (KRI). She is a council member for the National Costs of Living Council (NACCOL) and National Council of Digital Economy and 4IR, and member of the Panel of Experts (POE) for the Ministry of Local Government Development (KPKT). She sits on the Advisory Board of Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre (SEAC), London School of Economics and Political Science, (LSE) UK and has served as a Visiting Scholar at the Centre of Housing and Planning (CCHP), University of Cambridge. She has authored and co-authored book-length policy reports, published chapters in academic books and journals, provided policy briefs for governments at home and abroad; and involved in collaborative work with agencies such as the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR), UN-Habitat, Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) and Fundacion Metropoli.

Before joining the Institute, she was Program Director at Think City (a city-making initiative of Khazanah Nasional Berhad), where her role involved developing urban regeneration initiatives through a public grants program. Prior to that, Suraya was the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of the Built Environment at University Malaya as well as the Head of the Department of Quantity Surveying.

Suraya was educated at the University of Reading, the University of Malaya and the Bartlett School, UCL. Her research interests include the history of economic growth; housing, cities and regional development; theory of the firm and institutional economics. She is a Chartered Surveyor with the Royal Institute of Surveyors, Malaysia (RISM).

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