It is with great sadness that we report the death of Professor Murray Stewart – a highly respected and much-loved urban scholar who was a key driving force in the creation of the European Urban Research Association (EURA) in the 1990s.
Murray Stewart, Professor Emeritus at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, who passed away on 18 December 2025, had a distinguished career as an urban and regional studies expert and academic leader at the universities of Glasgow, Kent and Bristol before joining UWE as Director of the Cities Research Centre in 1996.
In July 1994, when he was a Professor at the School for Advanced Urban Studies at the University of Bristol, England he hosted an international conference on ‘Shaping the Urban Future’. This conference, which brought together 60 academics from across Europe and North America, discussed the possibility of creating a new international association to advance collaborative research relating to cities and urban change – an association that could, perhaps, partner with the existing US based Urban Affairs Association (UAA) in the future.
In the years that followed Murray was a tireless advocate of the importance of building international academic understanding of cities and, by collaborating with a wide range of scholars in many countries, he played a central role in organising an international conference on ‘Governing cities: International perspectives.’ Held in Brussels, in September 1997, urban scholars from sixteen different countries joined with a group of senior policy makers from the European Commission and, on 19 September 1997, the decision was made to launch a new international association – EURA was born.
Murray continued to be a very influential member of EURA. He was active in helping to organise several of the early EURA conferences – including Paris (1999), Dublin (2000) and Copenhagen (2001). In addition, he played a key role in bringing to fruition EURA’s first major cross-national research project – this was on Participation, Leadership and Urban Sustainability (PLUS). This project, which involved a collaboration between universities in nine countries, eighteen cities and two international organisations, led to the production of two respected international books published by Routledge: Urban Governance and Democracy (2005) and Legitimacy and Urban Governance (2006).
As well as his influential academic endeavours, Murray played a very active role in civic leadership in Bristol both before and after his retirement. He chaired several important local charities and was very energetic in promoting partnership working to deliver social good in Bristol.
Colleagues who remember Murray will recall not just a warm, friendly and humorous man, but also a highly intelligent intellectual who was passionate about the importance of addressing specific urban problems in an interdisciplinary way.
EURA thanks Murray for his outstanding contribution to the creation and early development of our association and for his major contribution to the field of urban studies. We send sincere, condolences to his family and friends.
Murray’s EURA friends
