MIGUEL ROBLES-DURÁN
Associate Professor of Urbanism

Miguel Robles-Durán is an urbanist, theorist, designer, educator, and podcaster recognized for advancing Unitary Urban Praxis—an anti-capitalist, transdisciplinary approach to urbanization that integrates eco-socialist theory and policy with strategic actions to reclaim and transform urban environments in the pursuit of social and environmental justice. In 2008, he co-founded Cohabitation Strategies, a non-profit cooperative dedicated to socio-spatial development and countering neoliberal urbanization. In 2019, he co-founded Urban Front, an international consultancy that collaborates with progressive governments to advocate for the Right to the City. Additionally, alongside Marxist geographer David Harvey, he co-founded Politics In Motion, a media platform dedicated to counter the destructive forces of capitalism and envision alternative futures. 

Robles-Durán is a tenured Associate Professor of Urbanism at The New School / Parsons School of Design. Prior to this, he held academic positions at TU Delft, The Berlage Institute, and Zürich University of the Arts. His notable contributions to envisioning urban justice have been featured at internationally renowned institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), MAK Museum Vienna, MAXXI Rome, La Biennale di Venezia, and several distinguished biennials including those in Istanbul, Shenzhen, Chicago, Rotterdam, and Lisbon. Academically, he is poised to enhance discussions on urban inequality with his upcoming book collaboration Cohabitation Strategies: Visions and Actions for the Co-Production of Social Space set for a 2025 release by ORO Editions. His critical insights into capitalist urban dynamics are also articulated in the book Urban Asymmetries: Studies and Projects on Neoliberal Urbanization, where he serves as both co-author and co-editor, exploring the intricacies and destructive forces of neoliberal urbanization.

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MIODRAG MITRAŠINOVIĆ
Professor of Urbanism and Architecture

Miodrag Mitrašinović is an architect, urbanist, author, and Professor of Urbanism and Architecture at Parsons School of Design, The New School university in New York City. He is the editor of Architecture and the Public World: Kenneth Frampton (Bloomsbury, 2024), co-editor of Public Space Reader (Routledge, 2022) and Emerging Public Realm of the Greater Bay Area: Approaches to Public Space in a Chinese Megaregion (Routledge, 2021), the editor of Concurrent Urbanities: Designing Infrastructures of Inclusion (Routledge, 2016), co-editor of Travel, Space, Architecture (Routledge, 2009), and author of Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space (Routledge, 2006). Mitrašinović has served in a variety of scholarly, professional and editorial roles. He regularly lectures on his scholarly work as well as on his work as design educator and academic leader. He holds Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of Florida at Gainesville (1998), U.S.A.; MArch from The Berlage Institute, the Netherlands (1994); and Dipl. Ing. Arch. Diploma from the University of Belgrade, Serbia (1992). Before joining The New School in 2005, he held teaching and research appointments at the University of Texas at Austin (1998-2005, with tenure), at the University of Florida at Gainesville (1995-96 and 1997-98), and at Kyoto University in Japan (1996-97). In 2012, he completed the academic leadership program at Harvard University, the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education (MLE).

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WILLIAM MORRISH
Professor of Urban Ecologies

As high-speed global change profoundly alters the conditions of Earthly life and coexistence, a gathering movement of people and scholars, scientists and creators is deeply rethinking “all the ways we imagine how we will live together.”  Recognizing that the forces of planetary urbanization coincide with the “slow violence” of climate change and inequality, drawing from deep wealth of research, scholarship and creative practice Morrish embrace cities as places of possibility, living spaces of democracy and solidarity, where vital, creative societies may still flow from the work of people who “propose to make their city together” as a creative and tolerant citizenry.  Reframing and nurturing basic urban relationships, building social capacities and collective intelligence cultivating systems and mesh works that preserve life, livelihood and culture, citizenry actively making their city, through “the work of being public,” creating and constantly recreating the urban ecologies that make the city spaces for our common life. William holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Masters of Urban Design in Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design.

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GABRIELA RENDON
Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Community Development

Gabriela Rendón is a Mexican-born urban planner, researcher, and educator committed to social and spatial justice. She is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Community Development and Founder Director of the Housing Justice Lab at The New School. Her expertise and research interests include community planning and design, socio-spatial restructuring of immigrant neighborhoods, rise and settlement of Latinx urban communities, housing and tenants rights, gentrification and displacement, cooperative housing models, as well as other collective and non-speculative housing development schemes providing equitable development in profit-driven urban environments. Rendón is cofounder of Urban Front and Cohabitation Strategies. Over the last twenty years, she has worked in urban, housing, and community-based projects commissioned by art and cultural institutions, as well as municipalities and public agencies in diverse cities in Western Europe, North America, and South America. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Cooper Square Community Land Trust and The Shape of Cities to Come Institute. 

Rendón holds a Ph.D. in Spatial Planning and Strategy and an MS in Urbanism from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and a BS in Architecture from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico. Her work has been exhibited at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), the Portugal Triennial 2016, the Vienna Biennale 2015, the Istanbul Design Biennial 2012, and the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. She is the author and co-editor of a number of publications. Her latest publication Cohabitation Strategies: Visions and Actions for the Co-Production of Social Space (ORO Editions, 2025) will be released in Spring 2025. She is currently working on the book Defiant Neighborhoods: Rise, Revitalization, and Gentrification of Immigrant Communities in Latinx Brooklyn (NYU Press, forthcoming 2026) and co-editing along with Silvia Emanuelli De Gruyter Handbook for Housing Justice (De Gruyter, forthcoming 2007).

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JILLY TRAGANOU
Professor of Architecture and Urbanism

Jilly Traganou is a Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Parsons School of Design, and affiliated faculty with the Doctorate in Public and Urban Policy at the Schools of Public Engagement, and the Department of Politics at the New School for Social Research. Jilly’s work examines urban and material questions related to social movements; everyday utopias; decolonizing design; climate displacement; and the relation between urban and migration policy and design-led advocacy. Her current research is focusing on the role of spatial agency, material engagement, and social reproduction in prefigurative political spaces (Occupy, Christiania Freetown, Standing Rock).  

Jilly has been a fellow of the Fulbright (Brazil), Japan Foundation, GIDEST, the European Union Science and Technology Postdoctoral Program in Japan, Bard Graduate Center, Princeton Program in Hellenic Studies, and Monbusho, and a recipient of grants by Graham Foundation, Zolberg Institute for Migration Studies, and Design History Society. She has received the 2016 Design Incubation Scholarship award for her book Designing the Olympics and film “Mexico 1968: Visual Identity.”

She is the author of Designing the Olympics: Representation, Participation, Contestation (Routledge, 2016), and The Tokaido Road: Traveling and Representation in Edo and Meiji Japan (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), and co-editor with Sarah Lichtman of Design, Displacement, Migration (Routledge 2023), editor of Design and Political Dissent: Spaces, Visuals, Materialities (Routledge 2020) and co-editor with Miodrag Mitrasinovic of Travel, Space, Architecture (Ashgate, 2009). She has guest-edited six peer-reviewed special issues: “Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games,” with Izumi Kuroishi, Review of Japanese Culture and Society (2021-22); “Material Displacements” with Sarah Lichtman, Journal of Design History (2021), “Design in the Pandemic: Dispatches from the Early Months,” with Barbara Adams and Betti Marengo, Design and Culture (2021), “Design and Society in Modern Japan,” with Sarah Teasley and Ignacio Adriasola Munoz, Review of Japanese Culture and Society (2016); “Visual Communication Design in the Balkans,” with Artemis Yagou, The Design Journal (2015); and “Design Histories of the Olympic Games,” Journal of Design History (2012).

Since 2018, she has been (co)Editor-in-Chief of Design and Culture, a seminal journal in the field of design studies. She was also Reviews editor of the Journal of Design History (2011-2016), and is currently a member of the editorial board of the Working Papers in Policy, Design and Development. Her recent publications include “Embodied Infrastructures, “Girl with Maquette,” and “The Paradox of the Commons.”

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EVREN UZER
Assistant Professor of Urban Planning

Evren Uzer is a NYC based educator, urban planner and community practitioner working on civic engagement in planning and design and her current research focuses on activism, critical heritage studies and feminist spatial practices. She is Associate Professor of  Strategic Design and Urban Practice at Parsons School of Design, The New School. Her current research focuses on community engagement in collaborative processes, critical heritage and resistance studies and feminist spatial practices. For education-focused partnerships and co-design projects, she regularly collaborates with NYC based community organizations and public agencies for co-design and community engagement-focused projects. She is currently PI for Community Engagement 101 curricular research project and Foundations: Teaching and Learning Frameworks for Equitable Community Engagement course for Faculty, together with Cynthia Lawson-Jaramillo and Michele Kahane.

Evren has a PhD and BSc in Urban and Regional Planning, and MSc in Urban Design, from Istanbul Technical University. Her PhD thesis (2010) is on cultural heritage at risk. Evren joined Parsons in 2015 from University of Gothenburg in Sweden where she was a postdoctoral research fellow between 2013-2015 in the School of Design and Crafts where she worked on her project focusing on Heritage activism and 2016-2021 on “Reconciliatory Heritage: Reconstructing Heritage in a Time of Violent Fragmentations” funded by Vetenskapsradet (VR), Swedish Research Council . She has previously taught at Pratt Institute in NYC, and her prior teaching also includes ITU Faculty of Architecture in Istanbul- Turkey, Auckland University of Technology in Auckland New Zealand, and Bergen School of Architecture in Norway. 

Evren’s practice is currently split between community engagement, planning and design work at Collective for Community, Culture and Environment-CCCE  and her artistic practice at roomservices. Through these two initiatives, she works on advocacy planning, artistic research, co-design and non-academic and non-conventional forms of publishing. CCCE is a NYC based, an interdisciplinary collective of women and women identified individuals, working on projects that further economic resilience, cultural diversity, public health, social justice, and environmental sustainability especially focusing on engaging low- and moderate-income residents and communities to shape decisions about their environment and everyday life. Roomservices is an artistic research collaboration for practice-based and experimental design projects, dealing with issues such as DIY urbanism, artistic research and collaborative practices. 

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Tom Angotti is Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and Director of the Hunter College Center for Community Planning and Development, as well as Adjunct Professor at Parsons School of Design in Urban Planning and Design. His recent books include The New Century of the Metropolis, New York For Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate, which won the Davidoff Book Award, and Accidental Warriors and Battlefield Myths. He is co-editor of Progressive Planning Magazine, and Participating Editor for Latin American Perspectives and Local Environment. He is actively engaged in community and environmental justice issues in New York City.

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Andy Battle is a historian who writes and teaches about urbanization and capitalism, with a special focus on the history of New York City. He has a PhD in History from the CUNY Graduate Center, where his dissertation focused on the deindustrialization of New York City and where he was a fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics. In addition to teaching Urban History Lab in the MS Design and Urban Ecologies program, he teaches courses in urban history and theory at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Battle’s writing has appeared in academic and popular forums, including the New York Review of Architecture, Boston Review, Brooklyn Rail, International Labor and Working-Class History, Capitalism Nature Socialism, and others.

Eric Brelsford is a Brooklyn-based software developer specializing in mapping and data visualization. With a background in computer science and experience in both frontend and backend development, he is passionate about creating community-driven maps and using data to drive social impact. As a freelance web developer and mapmaker, Breslford works with modern web mapping technologies, offline maps, and diverse data sources such as OpenStreetMap. His work explores how maps shape our understanding of cities and how communities can leverage mapping tools to influence their neighborhoods.

Eric’s journey into web mapping and community-driven data projects began with 596 Acres, a project that evolved into Living Lots, focused on identifying public land available, at a time when data about public land was difficult to find and City agency support for creating new spaces was nearly non-existent.This initiative not only acted as an organizing tool but also played a crucial role in pushing the city to acknowledge the importance of community spaces and allocate resources to support them. His work continued with Urban Reviewer, a comprehensive map of all urban renewal plans ever enacted in New York City, and many similar projects in New York City and other cities. Most recently, as part of the Parsons Housing Justice Lab team, he  developed the Housing Justice Oral History Project online platform. This project seeks to amplify and connect the memories and voices of all New Yorkers who have been involved in shaping the history of the city’s housing movement through their past and ongoing organizing efforts.Through his work, Eric continues to bridge technology and activism, using mapping as a tool for civic engagement, urban justice, and community empowerment. Brelsford is a Lead Design Technologist at the data visualization studio Stamen Design. He teaches GIS, Python, and web mapping at local universities across New York City.

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Sara Hodges is a political geographer, data scientist, and interactive cartographer. Her research is cross-disciplinary with a focus on identifying inequities in public service delivery through spatial and quantitative analysis of public policy and modeling actionable solutions. Her core research areas include voting rights, segregation, education funding, and environmental justice. She loves to find intuitive and beautiful ways to share her research with policy-makers and the public. 

She is currently the lead Data Scientist for the Voting Rights Section of the New York Attorney General’s Office. She has worked with Fair Districts GA for the past five years to quantify how gerrymandering impacts political power and representation in Georgia and to advocate for a more fair and transparent redistricting process. Previously, Sara served as the Director of Data and Visualization at EdBuild, a non-profit education finance research and advocacy organization. While at EdBuild she led a team of quantitative researchers and policy analysts that modeled more equitable education funding formulas that were passed in six states and created data-driven stories and visualizations to redefine the narrative around equity in education funding. Throughout her career she has worked on projects to use environmental data and climate change projections to inform public policy and planning with the United Nations, the Afghan National Environmental Protection Agency, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and others. 

Sara holds a Master of Arts in Geography from Hunter College at the City University of New York and a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Colorado College.

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Lauren Hudson is a cooperative and Solidarity Economy organizer and researcher in New York City. She is a collective member of the Solidarity Economy Principles and Practices Project, a solidarity economy organizing collective and holds a doctorate in Earth and Environmental Sciences from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. In addition to teaching at Parsons, Lauren is a proud Adjunct Assistant Professor at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies where she teaches Economic Democracy as part of their Workplace Democracy and Community Ownership program. Because of continued disinvestment in higher education for the past four decades, Lauren has also had the opportunity to teach courses in feminist urban geography and Geographic Information Systems at Sarah Lawrence College, Hunter College (CUNY), Medgar Evers College (CUNY), and John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY).

Lynn Lewis works at the intersection of community organizing, oral history, participatory action research and popular education. As the Executive Director of Picture the Homeless (PTH) she co-created PTH’s organizing methodology with founding members of the organization, and co-authored each of PTH’s participatory action research projects. She is a founder of the NYC Community Land Initiative (NYCCLI), a founding board member of the East Harlem/El Barrio Community Land Trust and a founding steering committee member of Communities United for Police Reform (CPR). At CPR, she co-chaired the policy and legislative workgroup, celebrating  the passage of landmark police reform legislation, the Community Safety Act in NYC.  

She holds an MA in Oral History from Columbia University, and was awarded an NEH/OHA Fellowship 2022/2023 for her work on the The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project. She is a trainer and advisor to the Housing Justice Oral History Project at the New School, and is collaborating with Voice of Witness in the development of a new oral history project, Unhoused Neighbors Speak Out. Recent publications include, Women Who Change the World  (City Lights, 2023) Love and Collective Resistance, The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project. Histoire Sociale / Social History. October 2020. On Redistributing Vacant Housing. Jewish Currents. October 2020, with Jenny Alchin, and Don’t Talk About Us, Talk With Us: Picture the Homeless, in Street Practice: Changing the Lens on Poverty and Public Assistance, with Lori McNeil. 2012

Lynn teaches at the New School in the Design and Urban Ecologies program, and the Advanced Seminar in Public and Urban Policy in Milano. Previous teaching experience includes Columbia University, Queens College and Hostos Community College and consults with grass roots organizations, community based and national organizations in New York City and nationally as a trainer and facilitator.

Masoom Moitra is a Brooklyn-based, Mumbai-grown urban practitioner focused on people-led planning, design, architecture, education, and arts. Since 2010, Masoom has collaborated with community groups, government stakeholders, scholars, activists, and researchers across the world to develop participatory plans and frameworks that champion equity, self-determination, and justice.

Currently a part of the Reimagining NYC cultural urban policy project with NOCD-NY and Arts & Democracy, Masoom’s work on the ground has ranged from researching creative affordable housing in some of the densest informal settlements of Mumbai, to designing participatory think tanks in Quito, from Navajo Nation-based efforts towards entrepreneurial alternatives on indigenous lands, to cultural organizing grassroots policy projects with public housing residents in Brooklyn, and supporting the engagement of over 180,000 New Yorkers in the development of CreateNYC—New York City’s first comprehensive cultural plan. She has served as the first Director of the The Shape of Cities to Come Institute (SCCI) and as the Director of El Puente’s Green Light District through which she helped lead the Nuestro Aire/ Our Air environmental justice campaign. 

Masoom was the co-Director of The New School Collaboratory, a platform for civic engagement and knowledge production at Parsons School of Design, where she has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in people-led design and planning for the past ten years. She is an alumna of the MS Design and Urban Ecologies program at Parsons/ The New School. Her work has been showcased at the Territorial Urgency: Urban Strategies for Social Justice exhibition at the Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, the Urban Embodiments exhibit at Falchi Building, and as a part of the Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities exhibition at MoMA, New York. Masoom’s writing and interviews have been featured in several online publications and reports including Domus, the Indypendent and CUNY TV.  

Rob Robinson was a co-founder and member of the Leadership Committee of the Take Back the Land Movement and is currently a Senior Advisor at Partners for Dignity and Rights (formerly known as NESRI). After losing his job in 2001, he spent two years homeless on the streets of Miami and ten months in a New York City shelter. He eventually overcame homelessness and has been in the housing movement based in New York City since 2007. In the fall of 2009, Rob was chosen to be the New York City chairperson— for the first ever; official mission to the US; of a UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing. He was a member of an advance team coordinated by the US Human Rights Network in early 2010; traveling to Geneva Switzerland several times to prepare for the United States initial appearance in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Rob has worked with homeless populations in Budapest Hungary and Berlin Germany and is connected with housing and land movements in South Africa and Brazil. He has worked with the European Squatters Collective, International Alliance of Inhabitants (IAI); the Landless Worker’s Movement (MST), the Movement of People Affected by Dams in Brazil (MAB) and the Platform of People Affected by Mortgages in Spain (PAH). He currently serves as the coordinator of the USA Canada Alliance

of Inhabitants on behalf of International Alliance of Inhabitants. He is a regular guest lecturer at the City University of New York Graduate Center and several University Law Schools throughout the US and Canada. He was appointed an adjunct professor of Urbanism at New School in September 2021.

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Claudia Tomateo is an architect, urban designer, activist and educator currently pursuing a PhD in Urban Planning at DUSP MIT. A detribalized Indigenous woman of Quechua Chanka descent, she grew up in Wari territory, now known as Lima, Peru. Her research focuses on Indigenous data visualization as a tool for collective liberation and the design of Indigenous futures. Grounded in Indigenous methodologies and guided by principles of reciprocity, solidarity, caretaking, and cyclicality, she seeks to challenge and dismantle hegemonic and extractive academic structures.

Tomateo is currently facilitating Indigenous data visualization and resurgence initiatives with Amazonian Quechua communities in so-called Peru. Before joining MIT she was a Research Fellow at the Urban Systems Lab in The New School. Claudia has taught design studios and GIS seminars at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and The New School Parsons School of Design. She holds the degrees of Professional Architect from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, and a Master’s of Architecture in Urban Design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.