Olivier Sykes is the Discipline Lead for Planning at the University of Liverpool and Editor in Chief of Transactions of AESOP. His research and teaching focus on the international and comparative dimensions of urban and territorial planning and related fields of urban and regional policy. His PhD thesis (Liverpool, 2004) examined the application of the European Spatial Development Perspective in selected planning systems in the EU. His recent book International Planning Studies: an introduction (2023) with David Shaw and Brian Webb provides a comprehensive overview of the international contexts for and dimensions of planning.