Stephen Hamnett studied as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford and completed his PhD at the University of Reading in 1981. Prior to coming to Adelaide in 1984, he held academic positions in The Netherlands, the UK and Queensland. Stephen became South Australia's first Professor of Urban and Regional Planning in 1990. He held the chair of planning for 20 years until he left the University of South Australia to become a full-time Commissioner of the Environment, Resources and Development Court of South Australia in February 2010. The title of Emeritus Professor was conferred by the university in August of the same year. Stephen Hamnett is also a Life Fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia and was given that Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. Stephen's longstanding research interests focus on Asian cities, planning law and metropolitan planning. In 2013 his book 'Planning Asian Cities: Risks and Resilience' (with Dean Forbes) was published internationally by Routledge UK and in 2016 he co-edited a special issue of the international journal Built Environment on 'Australian Cities in the 21st Century'. In November 2017 Stephen Hamnett was awarded the prestigious  Australian Cities Research Network (ACRN) Urban Research Medal for distinguished service to urban scholarship and practice in Australia. His book on 'Planning Metropolitan Australia', co-edited with long-term collaborator Professor  Robert Freestone of UNSW, was published in 2018 and won the Planning Institute of Australia's 'Cutting Edge Research And Teaching Award' in November 2018. Stephen was a visiting professor at the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities at the Singapore University of Technology & Design in 2017 and 2018. His most recent book, with Belinda Yuen, entitled 'Planning Singapore: The Experimental City' was published by Routledge in 2019 and launched at a ceremony in Singapore in December of that year. A new paperback edition of the book was published in 2021.