People

Penn IUR is affiliated with more than 200 experts in the field of urbanism. Its Faculty Fellows program identifies faculty at the University of Pennsylvania with a demonstrated interest in urban research; the Penn IUR Scholars program identifies urban scholars outside of Penn; and the Penn IUR Fellows program identifies expert urban practitioners. Together, these programs foster a community of scholars and encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration.

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Penn IUR Scholar

Marina Peterson

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Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin

Areas of Interest

    About

    Marina Peterson is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. An anthropologist, her work traces modalities of matter, sensory attunements, and emergent socialities, exploring diverse and innovative ways of encountering and presenting the ethnographic. Her research has explored multi-scalar dimensions of urban space through the study of sensory, sonic, and embodied processes ranging from musical performance to planning and labor. She has conducted ethnographic research in Los Angeles, Singapore, and Appalachian Ohio. Her work has appeared in Anthropological Quarterly, O-Zone: A Journal of Object-Oriented Studies, Space and Culture, Journal of Popular Music Studies, and Urban Anthropology.

    Her most recent book, Atmospheric Noise: The Indefinite Urbanism of Los Angeles traces environmental noise, atmosphere, sense, and matter that cohere in and through noise pollution legislation and the politics of airport noise in the 1960s, addressing key ways in which noise amplifies ways of sensing and making sense of the atmospheric. Engaging with a burgeoning literature on forces, attunements, and forms of containment that bring the atmospheric into focus, she examines crucial ways in which noise has been central to how we know how to feel and think atmospherically. 

    Selected Publications

    Peterson, Marina. 2021. Atmospheric Noise: The Indefinite Urbanism of Los Angeles. Duke University Press.

    Peterson, Marina. 2010. Sound, Space, and the City: Civic Performance in Downtown Los Angeles. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Bakke, Gretchen and Marina Peterson (eds.). 2017. Between Matter and Method: Encounters in Anthropology and Art. London: Bloomsbury.

    Bakke, Gretchen and Marina Peterson (eds.). 2016. Anthropology of the Arts: A Reader. London: Bloomsbury.

    Peterson, Marina and Gary McDonogh (eds.) 2012. Global Downtowns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Emerging Scholar

    Megan Reed

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    Assistant Professor, Sociology and Quantitative Theory and Methods (QTM), Emory University

    About

    Megan N. Reed is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Quantitative Theory and Methods (QTM) at Emory University. She received her PhD in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on urbanization and mobility in India. She is working with the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at Penn on a survey project addressing the topics of residential mobility, access to public services, and social attitudes in the Delhi National Capital Region. Prior to joining the Department of Sociology, Megan was a 2012 Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Fellow in India and also worked as the Research Coordinator at CASI.

    Affiliated PhD Student

    Shashank Saini

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    About

    Shashank Saini is a doctoral student of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on understanding violence in the face of rapid  transformations in the political economy of  urban India. Shashank’s dissertation research uses the optic of gendered embodiment, particularly masculinity,  to understand the subject making processes of male youth residing in peri-urban settings in Delhi.

    Penn IUR Scholar

    Saskia Sassen

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    Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, London School of Economics

    About

    Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University and a Professor at the London School of Economics. She has authored many books, the most recent of which is Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Harvard University Press 2014). Her books are translated into over 20 languages. She has received diverse awards, and was chosen as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy-2011, Top 100 Thought Leaders by GDI-MIT 2012 and 2013, and received the 2013 Principe de Asturias Prize for the Social Sciences.

    Selected Publications

    Sassen, Saskia. 2014. Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

    Sassen, Saskia. 2012. Cities in a World Economy.(4TH updated edition) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Sassen, Saskia. 2008. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Sassen, Saskia.2007. A Sociology of Globalization. New York: W.W.Norton.

    Sassen, Saskia. 1991. The Global City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (2001 2nd fully updated edition).

    Penn IUR Scholar

    Kathleen Wolf

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    Research Social Scientist, College of the Environment, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington

    About

    Kathleen Wolf is Research Social Scientist in the College of the Environment at the University of Washington. Wolf’s studies are based on the fundamental principles of environmental psychology; her professional mission is to discover, understand and communicate human behavior and benefits, as people experience nature in cities and towns. Her research into the human dimensions of open space, urban forestry, and natural systems explores the costs, benefits, and potential ecosystem services of nearby nature. Studies have included perceptions of urban forestry in retail and commercial districts, the integration of urban nature and transportation systems, the human health and wellness benefits associated with the experience of nature, and effective integration of science and policy through technology transfer. She has collaborated with the U.S. Forest Service Pacific NW Research Station to develop a program on urban natural resources stewardship, and is a research advisor to the TKF Foundation. An overview of Wolf’s research programs can be found at www.naturewithin.info; additional research findings on Green Cities: Good Health are at www.greenhealth.washington.edu.

     

    Selected Publications

    Wolf, K.L. 2014. Greening the City for Health. Communities & Banking, 25(1): 10-12.

    Wolf, K.L. 2014. City Trees and Consumer Response in Retail Business Districts. In Handbook of Research on Retailer-Consumer Relationship Development, F. Musso, and E. Druica, eds. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

    Wolf, K. L. 2013. Why Do We Need Trees? Let’s Talk About Ecosystem Services. Arborist News, 22(4): 32-35.

    Wolf, Kathleen. 2012. Economics of City Trees. Sitelines: Landscape Architecture in British Columbia, October: 14-17.

    Wolf, K. L., and L.E. Kruger. 2010. Urban Forestry Research Needs: A Participatory Assessment Process. Journal of Forestry, 108(1): 39-44.

    Wolf, K. L. 2008. Metro Nature Services: Functions, Benefits and Values, 294-315. In Growing Greener Cities: Urban Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century, S.M. Wachter and E.L. Birch, eds.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

     

    Affiliated PhD Student

    Tali Ziv

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    PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology

    About

    Tali Ziv is currently a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology with certificates in both Africana and Urban studies. Her research explores the contemporary decarceration efforts in Philadelphia, examining the community-based institutional transformation that has shaped the incarceration alternative landscape. She does this through a structural analysis of the historical economic and political forces that shaped both carceral and decarceral approaches to the social issues of addiction and poverty as well as an intimate analysis of individual experiences navigating these systems. In sum, her dissertation research explores the transformation of urban approaches to racialized poverty from both a structural and intimate vantage point. She conducted this research in collaboration with various city agencies, participating in applied projects both technically and advocacy-based in the field of re-entry. She engages her public health training to bring the qualitative data from her anthropological research into conversation with applied initiatives and interventions at the municipal level.

    Selected Publications

    Ziv, Tali. 2020. Alienation in the Black Marxist Tradition: Exploring critical epistemology and consciousness in Black Politics. American Quarterly. Under Review.

    Ziv, Tali.  2017. “It be hard just existing”: Institutional Surveillance and Precarious Objects in the Northeast Rustbelt. Ethnography. Vol. 18(2):153-174.

    Myers, Neely, Ziv, Tali. 2016. “No one ever even asked me that before”: Autobiographical Incoherence, Psychosis and Recovery among African Americans in a High Poverty, Urban Neighborhood. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Vol. 30 (3): 395-413.

    Barg, Frances, Kellom, Katherine, Ziv, Tali et al. 2017. LVAD-DT: Culture of Rescue and Liminal Experience in the Treatment of Heart Failure. American Journal of Bioethics. Vol. 17(2): 3-11.

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