Alina Shults

Research

Peer-reviewed work, spatial analysis, and field research on how cities are lived in — from the sociology of homelessness to Traces of Life, an in-progress EEG and behavioural study of how old and new public housing feels in Hong Kong.

Flagship — Traces of Life

Master of Urban Design, HKU · in progress

An EEG and behavioural study of affective response to old versus new public housing in Hong Kong.

Traces of Life — carpets aired over a railing in the shared space of a Hong Kong public housing estate; everyday traces of inhabitation
Fig. — Aired carpets in an old estate's shared space, Hong Kong — traces of inhabitation. Click to zoom (colour).

Master's research in progress, The University of Hong Kong (Urban Design), supervised by Dr Alice Vialard with Dr Waishan Qiu and Dr Bin Jiang. It started from a simple observation: an old housing estate, soon to be demolished, felt more alive than the polished new towers built to replace it — because of the visible traces of inhabitation residents leave behind. The study introduces Inhabited Visual Complexity (IVC): the visual richness that accumulates through decades of living — laundry, plants, grilles, signage, small personal things — and asks whether it is part of what makes older estates feel welcoming rather than threatening. The planned design pairs EEG (frontal alpha asymmetry, frontal alpha and beta; Emotiv EPOC X) with self-report (SAM, PRS-11) and an online perception survey pre-registered on OSF and run with Prolific, comparing two old estates and two new developments across six shared-space typologies. The main comparison uses real, controlled photographs normalised in CIELAB for luminance and colour so that era, rather than image exposure or palette, drives the comparison, with an IVC gradient generated by inpainting kept as a separate, clearly labelled condition. Semantic segmentation yields roughly forty morphological measures — inhabited-element density, visual entropy, green view index, enclosure — that feed linear mixed-effects models with estate as a random effect. So far only a small behavioural pilot has data; the behavioural strand is under way and the EEG strand is still to come.

View the midterm presentation →

Spatial analysis

Two analytical studies that read urban form from data — where heat risk is structured by built form in Hong Kong, and how the legibility of informal Manila has shifted over two decades.

Urban Heat Island, Hong Kong

Health impact assessment · 2024

A health-impact assessment built end-to-end from satellite remote sensing.

Urban Heat Island, Hong Kong — analytical board: land-surface temperature and UHII grids, the remote-sensing pipeline, and built-environment indicators (building height, FAR, coverage)
Fig. — LST & UHII analysis. QGIS · Python · Landsat. Click to zoom (colour).

A health-impact assessment of Hong Kong's urban heat island, built end-to-end from satellite remote sensing. Using summer Landsat 8/9 imagery (C02/T1 L2, Jun–Sep 2023), the analysis derives land-surface temperature and Urban Heat Island Intensity on a 500×500 m grid, then links the thermal burden to built-environment indicators — mean building height, floor-area ratio, and building coverage — showing where heat risk is structured by urban form rather than isolated hotspots.

Tools: QGIS · Python · Landsat remote sensing · Proof: full analytical board

Space Syntax, Manila

Spatial analysis · 2025

Informal settlements across 2004, 2014, and 2025.

Space Syntax, Manila — analytical board: multi-year satellite imagery, QGIS vectorized layers, and connectivity, intelligibility, and local/global integration maps across 2004, 2014, 2025
Fig. — Integration & intelligibility maps. QGIS. Click to zoom (colour).

A spatiotemporal space-syntax study of three of Manila's informal settlements — Barangay 176, Bagong Silang, and Payatas — across 2004, 2014, and 2025. Satellite imagery is vectorized in QGIS and analysed for connectivity, intelligibility, and local and global integration, tracing how the structure and legibility of informal urban fabric shift over two decades.

Tools: QGIS · space-syntax analysis · Proof: full analytical board

Research themes

Research expeditions

Ethnographic fieldwork · 2021–2023

Nine sociological / ethnographic field expeditions across Russia — in-depth and expert interviews, focus groups, surveys, mapping, transcript analysis, visual documentation.

2021Youth policy in Russian regionsTambov Oblast & Perm Krai (V. Kasamara, HSE)
2021Constructing ethnicity in local contextsRepublic of Dagestan (E. Varshaver)
2021Residents' health & the urban environmentKrasnodar (Analytical Center MUF)
2022Cultural identity under transformationRepublic of Udmurtia (M. Kozlova)
2022Meanings of ethnic categoriesRepublic of Dagestan (E. Varshaver)
2022The "usable past" in regional memory politicsMurmansk Oblast (O. Malinova)
2022Khalaktyrsky Beach: tourism vs. conservationKamchatka Krai (V. Kurennoy)
2023Informal youth communities (Tula & Veliky Novgorod)Veliky Novgorod (I. Gruzdev)
2023Self-perception in nature, Podkamennaya TunguskaKrasnoyarsk Krai (A. Pozanenko)

Summer schools & continuing education

Publications

Peer-reviewed · ORCID 0009-0008-7900-9839
  1. Varshaver, E. A., Khabibullin, A. M., Samosudova, A. D., & Shults, A.-V. E. (2024). "By the father" or "by both parents"? Variations of the descent classificatory rule regulating membership in ethnic categories in contemporary Dagestan. Monitoring of Public Opinion: Economic and Social Changes, (1), 176–201. (In Russ.) DOI · ResearchGate
  2. Shults, A. V. (2024). In the Shadow of the Metropolis: Ways of Using Urban Space by Homeless People (Moscow). The Ways of Russia (Пути России), 2(4), 15–41. (In Russ.) jrsre.ru
  3. Shults, A. V. (2024). Review of Lenhard, J., Making Better Lives: Hope, Freedom, and Home-Making among People Sleeping Rough in Paris (Oxford/New York, 2022). The Ways of Russia, 2(4), 267–270. [book review] (In Russ.) jrsre.ru
  4. Drozdova, A. (now Shults), & Malinovsky, A. (2022). Panoramic window with a mountain view: how "ethnic" jokes help to understand the social structure of Dagestan. In In the Footsteps of Ethnic Diversity in Modern Dagestan. HSE Publishing House. (In Russ.) ResearchGate

Selected conference papers

Let's build something for cities.

Open to collaborations, talks, and publications — based in Hong Kong.

Email me → Contact details