Jacqueline Klopp is the Director of CSUD. She is a Research Scholar who explores the intersection of sustainable transport, land use, accountability, data and technology. Klopp is the author of numerous academic and popular articles on land and the politics of infrastructure with a focus on Africa and is increasingly exploring the potential of new technologies to impact transportation and land-use in the 21st Century. Recently, she has been experimenting with creative urban mapping projects for both analysis and advocacy and is a founding member of the award winning DigitalMatatus consortium which has produced the first open transit data and public transit map for Nairobi’s quasi-formal minibus (matatu) transit system. She also helped found “Digital Cairo” a consortium of Transport4Cairo, Takween Integrated Community Development and DigitalMatatus to create open transport data for Cairo. With the French Development Agency, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Resource Institute among other partners, she helped found and continues to support new collaborative platforms on open transit data for Africa: DigitalTransport4Africa and Latin America DATUM to foster better research, planning and accountability. She is also a core member of the Clean Air Toolbox for Cities an interdisciplinary network centered at Columbia University that aims to support cities primarily in Africa and Asia with emissions, source (transport is a major source) and health impact data to address air pollution and climate change. She was honored to be selected by German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development as one of the “Remarkable Women in Transport” in 2021. She is currently writing a book on the politics of planning in Nairobi.
Klopp received her B.A. from Harvard University where she studied Physics and her Ph.D. in Political Science is from McGill University. Prior to joining CSUD Jacqueline Klopp was an Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and Director of the Economic and Political Development Concentration where she taught the politics of international development and oversaw student workshops across the globe. She currently teaches in the Sustainable Development undergraduate program at Columbia University.
