Spilios Iliopoulos

Spilios is a PlanAdapt Fellow; originally from Athens, Greece, currently based in Malmö, Sweden. In 2024, he completed an Internship (Research, Collaboration, and Innovation - Climate Change Adaptation and Climate Risk Management) with the PlanAdapt Coordination Hub.

His interest lies in the intersection between climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction with a focus on the creation of inclusive community-based spaces and processes for fostering local adaptation. Spilios’s interest derives from his interdisciplinary academic and professional background and years of involvement with community initiatives and grassroot movements in Greece and Sweden engaged with topics related to urban commoning, placemaking, the reclaiming of public space, community resilience and environmental justice in mountain areas.

Spilios is a recent graduate from the master program Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Adaptation at Lund University. He also holds a master in Sustainable Urban Planning a Design from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. His two master’s degrees gave him the opportunity to delve from various angles into the topic of Living Labs and the potentials of experimentation in the context of social innovation for sustainability transitions particularly in the Swedish reality. His master thesis from Lund University is titled “Assessing the Transformative Potential of a Sociocracy-Informed Climate Change Adaptation Lab in Lund, Sweden” while his master thesis from KTH is “Investigating the Transformative Capacity of Urban Experimentation” . The case of Urban Living Labs: Insights from the Swedish Context”. During his bachelor studies in spatial planning and development at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki he focused on the topic of urban greening, and more specifically investigated participatory methodologies for addressing the lack of green spaces in Greek cities, focusing on “pocket parks” and their potential for environmental and social sustainability.

As a research assistant in the division of Risk Management and Societal Safety at Lund University, Spilios had the opportunity to contribute to two research projects focusing on reimagining online education for disaster risk reduction, and problem solving in the fire rescue services in the Nordic context. His experience with multi-risk perspectives was with the Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Initiative for Southeastern Europe (DPPI SEE) in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina he had the opportunity to work with data collection and analysis for disaster preparedness by assisting in the development of the INFORM Risk Index for Albania, Romania, Montenegro, and North Macedonia. He was also engaged with capacity development for disaster preparedness in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro.