Panelists
As a Principal at MASS Design Group, Jha D leads the Public Memory and Memorials Lab, engaging communities to design projects such as the Emmett Till & Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument Project (Chicago, IL), the Gun Violence Memorial Project (multiple cities), and the Sugar Land 95 Cemetery Revitalization Project (Sugar Land, TX).
Beyond her contributions at MASS, Jha D is a spoken word artist, event producer, and SpaceMaker for the LGBTQ+ communities of color. In 2023, she was appointed to the Governor’s Advisory Council on Black Empowerment by Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey. Jha D graduated from Northeastern University (B.S. Arch) and the University of Pennsylvania (M. Arch I).
Professor Anjaria teaches courses in Urban Studies, Ethnographic Research Methods, Applied Anthropology, Sports and Society and the Culture and Politics of India and Pakistan. His research has focused on the mobility, sustainable transportation, body cultures, the politics of public space and the informal economy in urban India. His publications include a book titled the Slow Boil: Street Food, Public Space and Rights in Mumbai. He has also published articles on bicycling and infrastructure, corruption, street vending, civic activism, citizenship and popular culture in contemporary India, and co-edited a book on urban South Asia (Urban Navigations: Politics, Space and the City in South Asia, with Colin Mcfarlane). He is currently researching cycling in India.
Bench Ansfield is a historian of racial capitalism, the carceral state, and twentieth-century U.S. cities. They hold a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University, and they are currently an Assistant Professor of History at Temple University. Their book, Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City, will be published by W. W. Norton in August 2025. It examines the wave of arson-for-profit that coursed through the Bronx and scores of other U.S. cities in the 1970s.
Dr. Cuff engages spatial justice and cultural studies of architecture as a teacher, scholar, practitioner, and activist. Her leadership in urban innovation is widely recognized both in the U.S. and abroad. In 2006, Cuff founded cityLAB, a research and design center that initiates experimental projects to explore metropolitan possibilities. In 2019, cityLAB expanded its social and political engagement by creating coLAB in the Westlake/MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, in long-term partnership with community organizations. cityLAB represented the United States at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, was featured on CNN and in Newsweek magazine, and was named one of the top four urban think tanks in the country by Architect Magazine. The lab’s “housing first” research demonstrates that affordable, well-designed housing and neighborhoods are attainable foundations of equitable cities. cityLAB has developed sustainable, high-performance, low-cost housing prototypes for infill sites ranging from backyards to schoolyards. In 2017, after a decade of research that included a full-scale demonstration house built on the UCLA campus, Cuff co-authored California State legislation, effectively opening 8.1M single-family lots for secondary rental units.
Architect Dr. Patricia Elaine Green, a former head of the Caribbean School of Architecture, University of Technology, Jamaica, holds a doctorate from Universidad de Sevilla, Spain; an MSc in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania; and a Professional Diploma from the Architectural Association School of Architecture, United Kingdom. Currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of the West Indies, she is a frequent media voice with commentaries in the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper. A member of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and its International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscape, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) publication 100 Women: Architects in Practice includes Pat.
Betsy Huang is Professor of English at Clark University. She teaches and researches U.S. multi-ethnic and Asian American literature, genre fiction and theory with an emphasis on science fiction, and critical AI studies. Select publications include the monograph Contesting Genres in Contemporary Asian American Fiction (Palgrave, 2010) and co-edited volumes Asian American Literature in Transition: 1996-2020 (Cambridge UP, 2021), Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education and Societal Contexts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); and Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media (Rutgers UP, 2015). Techno-Orientalism 2.0: New Intersections and Interventions, a follow-up volume to the first anthology, is forthcoming in July 2025.
Randall Mason, PhD, FAAR, is Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design, where he has taught since 2004. He has served in several leadership roles for the School: Chair of Penn’s Graduate Program in Historic Preservation (2009-2017); Executive Director of PennPraxis (2014-2017); and founding director of the Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites (2019-2023). He currently leads the Urban Heritage Project research group.
Educated in geography, history, and urban planning (PhD Columbia University), Mason’s work addresses preservation, planning, and public space issues. Recent teaching and practice work includes: equitable redevelopment studios in Detroit, Philadelphia and Montgomery; cultural landscape research and planning projects in Washington, DC; conservation of Rwandan genocide memorials; preservation technical assistance in Alabama, and a conservation management plan for Miller House & Garden in Columbus, IN. While at Penn he has worked with the Getty Conservation Institute, the National Park Service, the Rwandan government, and many other partners.
Erin McElroy is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Washington where their work focuses upon intersections of gentrification, technology, empire, and racial capitalism, alongside housing justice organizing and transnational solidarities. McElroy is author of Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times (Duke University Press, 2024) and coeditor of Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance (PM Press, 2021). Additionally, McElroy is cofounder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project—counter-cartography collective that produces tools, maps, reports, murals, zines, oral histories, and more to further the work of housing justice. McElroy also runs Landlord Tech Watch, which produces collaborative research on the dispossessive technologies of landlordism. .
Malini Ranganathan is an associate professor in the School of International Service at American University and a political ecologist and urban geographer by training. Her research studies the political economy of land, labor, migration, and ecology in the context of capitalist urbanization. Currently she is working on how caste and racial histories, as well as contemporary ethnonationalism, give rise to unequal housing, labor exploitation, and climate vulnerability. She scholarship expands frameworks of environmental justice in both India and the U.S. Her book Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City (Cornell Press, 2023) won the 2024 Anthony Leeds Prize in Critical Urban Anthropology. She won the 2023 Harold M. Rose Award for Antiracism Research and Practice from the American Association of Geographers, and is the recipient of a 2024-2026 American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Fellowship.
Orkan Telhan is the Chief Information and Data Officer at Ecovative, leading the Data Systems and Intelligence group. He is a fellow at MIT’s Art, Culture, Technology program and the president of the Biodesign Challenge. Previously, Telhan was Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Istanbul Biennial, New Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, Design Museum London, and Museo Reina Sofia. Telhan holds a PhD in Design and Computation from MIT.
Marques Vestal is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Critical Black Urbanism. He serves as a Faculty Advisor for Million Dollar Hoods, a community-driven and multidisciplinary initiative documenting the human and fiscal costs of mass incarceration in Los Angeles. He also serves as a historical consultant for the Luskin Center for History and Policy. Marques‘ current research traces the history of mass evictions in Los Angeles during the twentieth century.
Kate Wagner (b. 1993) is a critic and journalist based in Chicago and Ljubljana. She is currently the architecture critic at The Nation. First known for her satirical blog McMansion Hell, Wagner has served as a columnist in the fields of architecture and culture at a number of publications including The Baffler, Curbed, and The New Republic.
Krzysztof Wodiczko is Professor in Residence of Art, Design, and the Public Domain, Emeritus, at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.
He is internationally renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments, having realized over 90 such public projections and installations in countries including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, England, Turkey, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States.
Since the late 1980s, Wodiczko’s projections have actively involved marginalized and estranged city residents. Additionally, he has designed and implemented a series of nomadic instruments and vehicles in collaboration with homeless individuals, immigrants, and war veterans to support their survival and communication. These projects have been carried out in various countries, including England, Finland, France, Poland, Japan, and the United States.