Dr. Ana Paula Pimentel Walker (University of Michigan) has been selected to receive the 2025 Marilyn J. Gittell Activist Scholar Award. The award is co-sponsored by SAGE and the Urban Affairs Association (UAA).
This annual award was established to highlight field-based urban scholarship and promote the dissemination of work by activist urban scholars. The inspiration for this award is the career of Dr. Marilyn J. Gittell, former Director of the Howard Samuels Center and Professor of Political Science at The Graduate School at City University of New York. Dr. Gittell was an outstanding scholar and a community activist who wrote seminal works on citizen participation and was founding editor of Urban Affairs Quarterly, (now known as Urban Affairs Review). Thus, the award seeks to honor the contributions of a scholar whose research record shows a direct relationship between activism, scholarship, and engagement with community(ies).
AWARD COMMITTEE ASSESSMENT
The Urban Affairs Association’s Activist Scholar Award Committee selects Dr. Ana Paula Pimentel Walker to receive the 2025 Marilyn J. Gittell Activist Scholar Award. Through the national and international scope of her projects, research, and publications, Dr. Pimentel Walker’s scholarship has had an extensive impact on the communities where she works as well as within and beyond her field.
Focusing on the creation of socially and environmentally just cities, Dr. Pimentel Walker’s work engages and amplifies the voices of those excluded from planning processes. Dr. Pimentel Walker goes beyond the inclusion of marginalized communities in status quo planning processes by expanding the participatory strengths of the communities themselves and examining the processes and outcomes of efforts between impacted, marginalized communities and urban planners to co-create and co-manage planning projects.
Disseminating her work beyond academic, planning, and policy audiences, Dr. Pimentel Walker ensures that her findings and illustrations of alternative organizations and processes are also accessible to community members and the variety of professionals working within communities. An extraordinary characteristic of Dr. Pimentel Walker’s work is how she centers the perspectives and experiences of marginalized populations to identify effective tools and methods without which socially and environmentally just cities cannot be created.
AWARD RECIPIENT BIO
Ana Paula Pimentel Walker is an associate professor in urban planning at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She investigates how disenfranchised communities engage with urban governance, evaluating the significance of participatory institutions in planning socially and environmentally just cities. Her research identifies the intersecting systems of oppression that hinder community participation in government and access to essential services and infrastructure. Dr. Pimentel Walker aims to elevate the voices of informal dwellers, migrants, and gender and ethnic minorities in the planning process by co-producing knowledge that defies inequalities and offers alternatives. The action-oriented components of her research support community priorities and social movement agendas through initiatives designed to enhance access to justice and health across the Americas.
Dr. Pimentel Walker has co-authored numerous peer-reviewed articles alongside community leaders, housing activists, and human rights advocates. Beyond her scholarly publications, she collaborates with partners to develop dissemination strategies that include educational and advocacy materials shared during dialogue circles, community workshops, and public gatherings. Dr. Pimentel Walker has served as co-chair of the ACSP Global Planning Educators Interest Group (GPEG). She holds a law degree from Brazil, master’s degrees in urban planning and Latin American studies (UCLA), and a Ph.D. in anthropology (UCSD).
AWARD PRESENTATION
The formal presentation of this award will be made at the upcoming International Conference on Urban Affairs in Vancouver, BC, Canada, at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre. The theme of this year’s conference is Urban Concentration: Challenges to Equity, Mobility, and Sustainability. The conference will convene over 900 participants from 55+ countries and representing 20+ fields of study. All award recipients will be formally recognized for their achievements during the Awards and Recognition Program on April 16, 2025; 3:00–4:15pm.
SPECIAL CONFERENCE SESSION
There will be a special conference session reflecting on the work of Dr. Pimentel Walker on Thursday, April 17 at 4:40pm. The detailed conference program will be updated with additional information as it becomes available.
AWARD COMMITTEE MEMBERS
J.R. “Jones” Estes, Portland State University (Chair); Megan Heim LaFrombois, Auburn University; Angeline Johnson, C3S Consulting; Tyeshia Redden, University of Toronto
ABOUT THE URBAN AFFAIRS ASSOCIATION
The Urban Affairs Association (UAA) is an international professional organization for 1000+ urban scholars, researchers, policy analysts, & public service providers. UAA is dedicated to creating interdisciplinary spaces for engaging in intellectual and practical discussions about urban life. Through theoretical, empirical, and action-oriented research, UAA fosters diverse activities to understand and shape a more just and equitable urban world.
In addition to hosting an annual conference, UAA sponsors ongoing professional development opportunities; Upsilon Sigma: The Urban Studies Honor Society; and two peer-reviewed journals, the Journal of Urban Affairs and the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City. You can find UAA on the web, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, and X.
