Caroline Andrew (University of Ottawa)
Caroline Andrew’s professional career at the University of Ottawa spans more than 30 years. A former dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences (1997-2005), she is a full professor at the School of Political Studies and the Director of the Centre on Governance. She is a nationally recognized authority on urban and feminist studies, as well as on cultural diversity.
Edith Barrett (University of Connecticut)
Edith J. Barrett earned her PhD in Psychology from Northwestern University in the subfield of Methodology and Evaluation Research. At the University of Connecticut, she serves as Associate Dean for Social Sciences, Regional Campuses, and Community and Global Affairs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of Public Policy and Urban and Community Studies. She held previous academic positions at Brown University, the University of Texas at Arlington, and the University of Southern California’s Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research. Interested in the intersection of policy and urban life, her research has covered a number of topics including public support for social welfare, the impacts of forced relocation on residents of public housing developments, the role of urban public schools in mediating the potentially negative impact on youths relocated following devastating hurricanes, and the significant role of Black women state legislators in making human-centered social policy. Her current research explores the connection between political socialization and attitudes toward social policies among urban American teenagers. She has extensive experience working with public and non-profit organizations in community-based research and has conducted surveys, interviews, and focus groups in a variety of settings and with many different populations.
Victoria Basolo (University of California Irvine)
Victoria Basolo earned a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning and a M.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She held faculty appointments at the University of New Orleans and University of California, Irvine; visiting scholar positions at the Center for Housing Studies at the University of Glasgow, the University of California Center Sacramento, the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Department of Public Policy at the University of Malta; and administrative appointments at the University of California Center, Sacramento and University of California, Irvine. Her research and teaching focus on housing policy, environmental hazards, urban governance and the challenges of urbanization. She has published more than 35 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, as well as numerous conference proceedings, working papers, and reports. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Wells Fargo Foundation, the California Policy Research Center and the Fulbright Scholarship Program. She was twice elected to the governing board of the Urban Affairs Association and served a five-year term as editor of the Journal of Urban Affairs.
Jonathan Davies (De Montfort University)
Jonathan Davies is founding Director of the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity and Professor of Critical Policy Studies at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. He earned his DPhil from the University of York, UK in 2000, and has since held academic positions at the University of York, the University of Warwick, and latterly De Montfort since 2011. He researches urban governance and public policy from a state-theoretical perspective, and recently led a major global study of austerity, resistance and transformation in the period since the Global Economic Crisis of 2008-9. His resulting monograph, Between Realism and Revolt: Governing Cities in the Crisis of Neoliberal Globalism, was published by Bristol University Press in March 2021. Davies has been a UAA member since 2002, serving on the Governing Board (2014-20) and several committees, most recently as current member and past Chair of the Publications Committee. He won the UAA award for Best Paper presented at the 33rd Annual Meeting in 2003 for his essay “Partnerships versus Regimes: Why Regime Theory Cannot Explain Urban Coalitions in the UK” [published in JUA 25(3)].
James DeFilippis (Rutgers University)
James DeFilippis has a PhD in Geography from Rutgers University. He is currently a Professor of Urban Planning at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. His research focuses on the political economy of cities and communities. He is particularly interested in the processes of social change, and questions of power and justice in cities. While his interests are broad, it is questions of community control and building forms of power in poor neighborhoods that have been at the center of his work. He began working on and with efforts for community control over economic development more than 20 years ago and continues to work with and in support of community land trusts, community development credit unions, worker co-ops and other forms of community control. He is a founding member of the New York City Community Land Initiative (NYCCLI) and the Western Queens Community Land Trust (WQCLT).
He is the author or editor of six books, more than 50 articles and book chapters, and many applied monographs and reports for practitioners and advocates.
Karen Gibson (Portland State University)
Karen Gibson earned her Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley. She was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for African American Urban Studies and the Economy at Carnegie Mellon University from 1996-98. She drove from Pittsburgh to Toronto to attend her first UAA meeting in 1997.
She joined the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University in 1998, where for 21 years she taught courses on urban poverty, housing, community economic development, and black urban history.
Her scholarship seeks to answer questions about the political economy of racial economic inequality in the urban setting, primarily utilizing an historical approach. Research topics include housing policy, neighborhood change, and police-community relations in Portland’s historic African American community, the Albina District (1940-present). She has published in outlets such as Feminist Economics, Transforming Anthropology, the Journal of Planning Education and Research, and the Oregon Historical Quarterly. She also engaged in community development practice with local housing organizations and made numerous public presentations about community disinvestment, gentrification, and the history of police-community relations in the Albina District.
David Imbroscio (University of Louisville)
David Imbroscio is Professor in the Department of Political Science and Urban and Public Affairs at the University of Louisville. He graduated summa cum laude from Ohio State University with a B.A. in Political Science. He also holds Master’s degrees in Political Science from Ohio State and the University of Maryland, with specializations in the fields of Urban Politics, Urban Public Policy and Urban Political Economy. He completed his PhD at the University of Maryland, writing his doctoral dissertation under the direction of Stephen L. Elkin and Clarence N. Stone. He is author or editor of six books, including Urban America Reconsidered: Alternatives for Governance and Policy published by Cornell University Press. Other books include Reconstructing City Politics: Alternative Economic Development and Urban Regimes, Making a Place for Community: Local Democracy in a Global Era (with Thad Williamson and Gar Alperovitz), Theories of Urban Politics, 2nd Edition (edited with Jonathan Davies), and Critical Urban Studies: New Directions (also edited with Jonathan Davies, SUNY). He was the winner of the 2011 award for Outstanding Scholarship, Research, and Creative Activity in the Social Sciences at the University of Louisville and the 2012 Grawemeyer Award for Outstanding Instructional Development.
Cynthia Jackson-Elmoore (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo)
Cynthia Jackson-Elmoore earned a Ph.D. in public administration from the University of Southern California and serves as provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, CA. Prior to joining Cal Poly, Dr. Jackson-Elmoore held administrative and academic positions at Michigan State University as dean of the Honors College and as professor with affiliations in Social Work and the Global Urban Studies Program. She was acting assistant dean of the Urban Affairs Programs, director of the Urban Studies Graduate Program, and co-director of the Program in Urban Politics and Policy at MSU. She served on the public policy committee of the Michigan American Council on Education (MI-ACE) Women’s Network and on the Faculty Board of Advisors for MSU’s Community Economic Development Program. Dr. Jackson-Elmoore has conducted evaluations on community health care reform and published journal articles, books and book chapters on the governance role of nonprofit organizations in urban settings, brownfields, health and the built environment, privatization of municipal services, community participation in local health planning processes and engagement in state and local policy processes.
Louise Jezierski (Michigan State University)
Dr. Louise A. Jezierski (PhD, Sociology, University of California – Berkeley) is faculty in the James Madison College at Michigan State University (1997-present) and taught at Brown University from 1988-1997. She was a post-doctoral Fellow in 1992 with the Chicano Studies Research Center, Institute of American Cultures at UCLA. Her research focuses on the legacy cities, social policy, race, class and gender relations, and economic and community development, especially in the cities of Detroit, Flint, Lansing, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. Recent research projects include community building in Lansing, MI, gendered work and family strategies in the informal economy during the Covid-19 pandemic, soccer and community networks in Detroit, MI, “Race/Socioeconomic Area Characteristics & Cancer – Detroit” (NCI), state legislation on predatory lending, Michigan’s Latino communities, and Latino housing access in El Paso, Texas (HUD and National Hispanic Housing Council). She received the Michigan State University Alumni Club of Mid-Michigan Quality in Undergraduate Teaching Award in recognition of outstanding undergraduate teaching and two Michigan State University Service-Learning and Civic Engagement awards. A member of the Urban Affairs Association since 1987, she served and chaired numerous committees, and was Managing Editor of the Journal of Urban Affairs (2010-2014).
Rachel Garshick Kleit (The Ohio State University)
Rachel Garshick Kleit earned her PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and now serves as Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs in the College of Engineering and Professor of City and Regional Planning (CRP) in the Knowlton School of Architecture, both at the Ohio State University (OSU). Dr. Kleit is the former Section Head for City and Regional Planning in the Knowlton School. Prior to coming to OSU in 2012, Dr. Kleit was on the faculty the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. Her scholarship focuses on affordable housing and social inequality and has authored work on the social network impacts of mixed-income housing, the influence of public housing redevelopment on the lives of original residents, the combination of social services and housing, housing mobility and instability, and the transition of public housing authorities to actors in the private housing market. She has also published on the equity impacts of economic development and workforce policies on poverty and inequality, as well as on the changing relationship between housing and inequality since the US mortgage crisis.
Marla Nelson (University of New Orleans)
Marla Nelson, PhD, AICP, is a Professor of Planning and Urban Studies at the University of New Orleans where she coordinates the accredited Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program. She has published widely on the impacts of and responses to industrial and occupational restructuring in US cities and regions, human capital and interregional migration, and post-disaster recovery and redevelopment. Her current research focuses on adaptive migration as a critical site of action and examines how planning and policy can produce more just outcomes for residents and communities on the frontline of climate and environmental change. She has held numerous positions in national and local organizations including the Urban Affairs Association. In 2011, the Urban Affairs Association awarder her the UAA-SAGE Activist Scholar Award. She received her BA in economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and her MCRP and PhD in urban planning and policy development from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
Kathe Newman (Rutgers University)
Kathe Newman is a professor, Program Director of the Urban Planning and Policy Development Program and founding Director of the Ralph W. Voorhees Center for Civic Engagement, at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. She is also a member of the Graduate Program in Geography at Rutgers University. Kathe holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Graduate School and University Center at the City University of New York. Her work focuses on urban governance, housing finance, gentrification, foreclosure, community food security, and urban political economy. This work has appeared in a coedited book, book chapters, and articles in Urban Studies, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban Geography, Urban Affairs Review, Urban Geography, Shelterforce, Progress in Human Geography, Housing Studies, GeoJournal, and Environment and Planning A. She is an associate editor at Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. Kathe Newman has been a member of UAA since the mid-1990s. She has chaired the conference program committee; sat on a number of committees including the Activist Scholar Award and the Best Book Award Committee and is currently on the finance committee; served on the board; and mentored graduate students at the first two UAA pre-conference student workshops.
Claire Poitras (University of Montreal)
Claire Poitras earned her Ph.D. in Urban Planning from the University of Montreal in 1996 and has served as Professor of Urban Studies at the National Institute for Scientific Research since 2001. Dr. Poitras held a limited term appointment at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in 2001-2002. Between 2010 and 2017 she served as Director of the Urbanization, Culture and Society Center as well has serving as Scientific Director of the Villes Regions Monde network. Funded by a major grant the network included over 60 members from Universities in Québec. She was awarded several grants (6 M$) and contracts
(600 000$) for her research. She supervised 12 graduate students. C. Poitras has published 3 books and 58 papers and book chapters. Her book La cité au bout du fil (The city online, University of Montreal Press) published in 2000, won an award as the best book in urban history. She chaired the Urban Affairs Association program committee in 2009 and 2010 and was elected on the Governing Board for the 2012-2015 term. She acted as a member of the Best Book Committee in Urban Affairs in 2019 and 2020.
Gordana Rabrenovic (Northeastern University)
Gordana Rabrenovic, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Brudnick Center on Studying Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University at Albany, State University of New York. In her journal articles, books, and conference presentations she has documented, analyzed, and addressed social inequality and injustice on local, national, and international levels. She has collaborated with students, colleagues and practitioners on developing economic development strategies for inner city neighborhoods in Boston and is seeking solutions to the problems of hostility and violence arising from inter-group differences and social inequality in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and Israel and Palestine. In her book, Community Builders, she has studied the ability of grassroots organizations to unite residents around their common goals and has participated in efforts such as From Cradle to Prison Pipeline to expand the use of social science research to address structural racism. She also contributed to organizing conferences on fostering urban and community development and responding to conflict and violence and in editing special journal issues on hate crimes, ethnic conflict, and on the inclusion of refugees in the city.
Louise Simmons (University of Connecticut)
Louise Simmons received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Urban and Regional Studies in 1991. She is a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work. From 1980 until 2014 she was Director of the Urban Semester Program, bringing students to Hartford from the rural main campus of UConn to engage in internships and study urban issues. She also teaches in the Master’s in Social Work Program, focusing on community organizing, social movements, urban issues, and economic justice. She edited, co-edited and authored four books and written book chapters and articles on economic justice, labor-community coalitions, impacts of welfare reform, other social policies, and organizing on labor’s issues. From 2006 to 2012 she was co-editor of the Journal of Community Practice. She served on the UAA Governing Board from 2006 to 2012. She was Secretary-Treasurer from 2008 to 2011 and Governing Board Chair from 2011 to 2012. From 1991 to 1993 she served a term on the Hartford City Council, elected by a local third-party slate, People for Change. She has been active in social justice, feminist, anti-war and anti-racism movements in Hartford and greater Connecticut since moving there in the early 1970s.
Jocelyn Taliaferro (NC State University)
Jocelyn DeVance Taliaferro earned her MSW from Howard University and PhD from the University of Delaware, Biden School of Public Policy and Administration. She is currently an Associate Professor in the NC State University School of Social Work, where she has served as Director of the Graduate Program (DGP), Director of Field Instruction, and Interim Associate Department Head. In conjunction with her academic career, for over 25 years, she has served in the fields of social work and nonprofit management working or consulting for several nonprofit organizations in Baltimore, Delaware, Ohio, North Carolina, and Washington DC. She currently serves as Principal Investigator for the $1.4M NC State Opioid Workforce Expansion Program funded by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration. Dr. Taliaferro’s current research interests include Black women’s mental health and teaching using contemporary television. She has co-authored or contributed to books specifically related to capacity building such as African American student achievement, research methods for practitioners, teaching using the HBO special The Wire, as well as teaching human services online. Her teaching is primarily grant writing and program development, social work administration, and research methods in the MSW program at NC State.
