Robert Home is Professor of Land Management, and teaches Environmental Law and Planning subjects. He holds a degree in History (Cambridge) and a PhD in Geography from LSE, and is also a chartered town planner. He has researched widely on planning and land management topics in Europe and the Third World, and is a specialist in local authority accommodation assessments for Gypsies and Travellers (Bedfordshire, Cambridge sub-region, Dorset, East and North Surrey undertaken to date).

His publications include: books on Third World planning, land titling in Africa and the Caribbean, Gypsies, and inner city regeneration; recent articles in Socio-Legal Studies, Journal of Commonwealth Law and Legal Education, Habitat International, Planning Perspectives, Planning History, Romani Studies and elsewhere; and chapter contributions to books on the Gypsies of Britain and feminist approaches to land law. He is currently editing a book for Hart Publications, Squatters or settlers: Rethinking ownership, occupation and use in land law, comprising papers given to a recent workshop held at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Onati (Spain). He also contributes to the UN-Habitat Global Land Tools Network, and has undertaken many overseas consultancies (including to Zambia, Bulgaria and Macedonia).

The colonies of the British Empire gave rise to many of the biggist cities in the world; colonial policy and planning have had a profound impact in the form and functioning of these cities. Robert Home provides a critical assessment of the impact of British colonialism on world urban Developmenmt:

- the lagacy of Shaftesbury's Grand Modell in the New World and elsewhere

- the origins of racial segregation, from Raffles' Singapore to apartheid South Africa

- the building and renewal of port cities across the continents

- the new house forms devised from the verandah bungalow to the barrack block

- the control of city space by doctors and engineers