It’s official! You’re looking at the first Director of Justice x Belonging (JxB) at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. Additionally, my postdoctoral faculty role is being extended an additional year!
I am honored to help build just futures through an institution that plays such a determining role in the health of our city & world. But we got work to do.
Forging academic spaces in justice & belongingness is a marathon I’ve been on since I was 19. At 28, when I came to Penn, I thought my only job was to publish, teach, & get a tenure-track role. At 31, I see classroom happen in the streets & how justice is discipline-defiant.
Universities themselves are sites where real-world possibilities are practiced but where problems can be reproduced. Today, I am seeing that God had additional roles in mind in my journey as an educator. Transforming the culture of academia in which my work is transmitted can make universities into places that prototype true democracy, beloved communities, & networks of mutuality in our cities. I didn’t expect to emerge from this horrible year feeling that way, but here I am.
Looking forward to sharing more of where my initial priorities are in shaping how we continually decolonize our School - horizontally - across departments, research centers, & design professions of architecture, fine art, planning, preservation, real estate, and spatial analytics. Stay tuned!