Biografía en castellano aquí

I am an urban geographer and photographer living in Barcelona, Spain, where I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). I was previously a Fundació “La Caixa” Research Fellow at the Department of Geography (UAB) and the Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics, as well as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the Department of Humanities, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. I am also Research Associate with Deindustrialization and the Politics of our Time (DePOT) and a member of the COST Action Slow Memory: Transformative Practices for Times of Uneven and Accelerating Change.

Before relocating to Barcelona, I was Assistant Professor of Urban Studies (Queens College) and Geography (The Graduate Center) at the City University of New York. I was also affiliated with the Queens College MFA in Social Practice program and was founder and co-Director of the College’s City Lab. In 2017, I was the recipient of a Henry Wasser Award for Assistant Professors from the CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences.

I have also worked as Lecturer in Urban and Community Studies at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, as a youth programs educator at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, and at the Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown University.

I hold a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Manchester, a MRP in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University, and a BA in Sociology from Clark University, having also completed coursework in photography at the Rhode Island School of Design.

My academic work focuses on deindustrialization and urban redevelopment, landscapes of urban infrastructure, political debates about urban heritage and preservation, gentrification and migration, visual methods, and the spatial and cultural politics of urban transformation in Great Britain, the United States, and Spain.

Many of the research themes that capture my interest overlap with my arts practice. I have exhibited my photographic work internationally, was an Artist in Residence at the Center for Land Use Interpretation, and was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship with the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Aside from my individual creative work, I had a longstanding photographic collaboration, Site Unseen, with artist Adam Ryder. From March to July, 2022, I held a photographic exhibition called Industrial Obelisks at the Barcelona History Museum (MUHBA), part of the PICTURING research project funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship from the European Union.

I was raised in Connecticut (USA) and am a first-generation university graduate.  Coming of age in a place where social inequality is so stark and spatially delineated led me to want to study issues surrounding social justice and urbanism. Living in various cities in New England and the Mid-Atlantic piqued my interest in the socio-spatial processes of urban deindustrialization which led me to Manchester, England, and I have since focused on this theme in a comparative, international context.

I am interested in the experience and representations of the city, urban imaginaries, and thinking of the built environment as a dynamic artifact of social relations. I try to work with, and make my research available to, activists fighting for their right to the city.

This site is an attempt to highlight my academic and creative work.  Since they often overlap, this is an imprecise endeavor. I am okay with that.

Download full academic CV here