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Dr Lucy Montague is widely considered a leading authority on high streets. A Senior Lecturer at Manchester School of Architecture, she is known for her influential book High Street: How Our Town Centres Can Bounce Back from the Retail Crisis (co-authored with David Rudlin and Vicky Payne) and her groundbreaking research project Tales from the High Street, funded through the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851’s £100k Built Environment Fellowship.

In 2024, she was appointed as the Parliamentary Special Advisor to the House of Lords Built Environment Committee for its inquiry into high streets, culminating in the report High Streets: Life Beyond Retail?. Dr Montague is an active advocate for policy reform to support high street recovery and has spoken at both Labour and Conservative Party conferences, as well as being cited in parliamentary debate. She continues to advise government on high street policy, working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department for Business and Trade, and HM Treasury. Her wider built-environment policy work includes co-authoring the report Placemaking Not Plotting alongside leading industry professionals. Commissioned by members of the House of Lords, the report proposed policy changes to ensure the Government’s ambitious house-building targets to increase housing supply do not come at the expense of quality. 

Her work has received widespread media attention, with appearances on national television and radio and coverage in leading newspapers. Alongside her research and policy work, she delivers expert training to professionals working in urban regeneration. A central motivation throughout her work is to bring research, professional practice and policymaking closer together, creating stronger connections between evidence, the realities of delivery, and the decisions that shape places.