Amada Armenta

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Amada Armenta’s research examines the connections between the immigration enforcement system and the criminal justice system, and the implications of this connection for immigrants, bureaucracies, and cities.

Her award-winning book, “Protect Serve and Deport: The Rise of Policing as Immigration Enforcement” (University of California Press, 2017), analyzes the role of local law enforcement agencies in immigration enforcement in Nashville, Tennessee. Currently, she is working on her second book project, an examination of the legal attitudes of unauthorized Mexican immigrants in Philadelphia.

Dr. Armenta’s research has been published in journals of sociology, law and society, and policy. She has received research funding from the American Sociological Association, the National Science Foundation, the American Society of Criminology, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Prior to joining Luskin as a faculty member, she was an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Walker Wells

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Walker Wells is Executive Director of Global Green USA, a national non-profit organization headquartered in Santa Monica.   He works with cities, neighborhoods, and community development organizations across the country to further green building and sustainable development practices through technical guidance, stakeholder facilitation, and development of innovative polices and programs.

Wells is a certified urban planner, a LEED Accredited Professional and a Green Rater. He served as an appointed member of the State of California Green Building Code Advisory Committee from 2010-2014, is and a lecturer in Green Urbanism at the Claremont Colleges and the UCLA Urban Planning Program.

Wells is a 2013 Fulbright Fellow with the Royal Institute of Technology Urban Planning Program in Stockholm, a 2012 Pritzker Fellow at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and co-author of the 2007 book Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing.

Wells holds Bachelor’s degrees in Sociology and Environmental Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara and a Master’s of City and Regional from the California Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo. He studied at Lund University and the Lund PolyTechnic Institute School of Architecture in Sweden. Prior to joining Global Green Mr. Wells was a Senior Urban Designer with Gruen Associates in Los Angeles, a Planner with the City of Santa Monica, and an Urban Planner for the City of Malmo, Sweden.

Hannah King

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Hannah is a doctoral student of transportation planning at UCLA. Prior to coming to UCLA, she spent several years in sea level rise and economic development planning at the state of Florida. Her current research interests center on active transportation, GIS, and transportation financing. She is being advised by Dr. Brian Taylor.

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannahrking

 

Taner Osman

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Taner Osman is a postdoctoral researcher at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and an instructor in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA.

He researches how local economic development and land use policies affect the performance of industries and regional economies, and also specializes in the impact of high-technology industries on local economies.

He is a co-author of the book, “The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies,” a comparative study of the Bay Area and Los Angeles economies.

Silvia R. Gonzalez

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Silvia Gonzalez (Jimenez) is a doctoral student in Urban Planning and the Assistant Director at the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research interests focus on the implications of place and the urban spatial structure on socioeconomic inequality. Previously, Silvia worked with the Center for the Study of Inequality at UCLA. She has worked extensively, as a researcher and consultant with nonprofit, community based, and government organizations. She holds a BA in Geography/Environmental Studies from UCLA and a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning with a focus on Economic Development also from UCLA.

Selected Publications:

Loukaitou-Sideris, A., Gonzalez, S., & Ong, P. (2017). Triangulating Neighborhood Knowledge to Understand Neighborhood Change: Methods to Study Gentrification. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 0739456X17730890.

Pierce, G., & Gonzalez, S. R. (2017). Public Drinking Water System Coverage and Its Discontents: The Prevalence and Severity of Water Access Problems in California’s Mobile Home Parks. Environmental Justice.

Pierce, Gregory, and Silvia Gonzalez. “Mistrust at the tap? Factors contributing to public drinking water (mis) perception across US households.” Water Policy 19, no. 1 (2017): 1-12.

Pierce, Gregory, and Silvia Jimenez. “Unreliable water access in US mobile homes: evidence from the American Housing Survey.” Housing Policy Debate 25.4 (2015): 739-753.

Jimenez, Silvia, and Gregory Pierce. “Inequality at the Tap: Explaining Shortcomings in Safe Water Access in Los Angeles’ Mobile Home Communities.” UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Social Justice Fellowship Publication. (2013). Online at: http://luskin.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/Jimenez_Pierce.pdf

Emily Erickson – GRADUATED

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Emily Erickson’s research examines immigrant experiences of urban America with a focus in the areas of low wage work, urban poverty, and the community effects of the deportation fear.

Her dissertation explores how undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles and Albuquerque overcome the fear of deportation to participate in local and national level political movements. This is a continuation of previous work looking at the effects of deportation fear on community life – including research into the experiences of undocumented students at UCLA.

Emily holds a bachelor’s degree in Latin American history and development sociology from UC Davis and a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from UC San Diego.

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-erickson-9bb0b2b
Office: 1369C Public Affairs Building
Contact: 530-400-5756

 

Nicole Lambrou

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Nicole’s work focuses on the politics of climate resilience and how they inform urban environmental transformations. Her research documents the work of planners, engineers, designers, ecologists, and everyday urban dwellers in addressing extreme climate events, and explores the values and spatial imaginaries that drive their efforts. Nicole formed a non-profit, tinkercraft: design & advocacy group, to take on projects framed by this research and to work with communities facing climate risks.

Ana Maria Duran Calisto

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Ana Maria Duran Calisto is an Ecuadorean architect, urbanist and environmental planner. She co-founded the design firm Estudio A0 in 2002 with her partner Jaskran (Jazz) Singh Kalirai in Quito, Ecuador, after receiving a Master of Architecture from PennDesign at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Liberal Arts Bachelor´s degree from Universidad San Francisco de Quito. The main pursuit of Estudio A0 is to develop environmentally responsible design and construction systems at all scales, by focusing on the possibilities of recycling, in situ clean energy production, water harvesting and reuse, high and low-tech hybrids, the investigation of local materials, and the reactivation of local ecologies. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Urban Planning at UCLA, under the advice of Professor Susanna Hecht. The focus of her research is the history of urbanization in the Amazon River basin.

Website: www.estudioa0.com
Contact: 424-361-8785

Gregory Pierce

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Greg Pierce (he/him) is the Research and Co-Executive Director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and the director of the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab. He is also the director of the UCLA Water Resources Group within the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and serves as an adjunct associate professor in the department of urban planning. He is a faculty affiliate of the Lewis Center for Regional Studies and Institute of Transportation Studies in the Luskin School, and Center for Healthy Climate Solutions in the Fielding School of Public Health.

Dr. Pierce’s research, teaching and service is motivated by persistent inequities in access to the essential environmental services that we need to survive and thrive. He examines how infrastructure planning and policy efforts either perpetuate or address service inequities, and demonstrates how communities strategically cope with and overcome inequities. His primary focus is on water insecurity, but he also examines solutions to cross-cutting green infrastructure, climate resilience and transport insecurities.

He has secured 40+ extramural research funding awards as a principal investigator at the Center for Innovation. Current and past sponsors of this work include the California State Water Resources Control Board, the California Air Resources Board, the Strategic Growth Council, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department, WaterAid, the Water Foundation, The Resources Legacy Fund, the World Bank, the UC Multicampus Research Initiative, the UC Institute of Transportation Studies and the UCLA Grand Challenge, LADWP and Los Angeles County.

Pierce is an author or co-author of 50+ peer-reviewed articles, including many in the leading journals in urban studies, infrastructure planning and policy and environmental health, as well as 20+ major Luskin Center for Innovation reports. He has also reviewed articles for 50+ journals, several funding agencies and many collaborating researchers. Pierce received a PhD in urban planning in 2015 and an MA in urban planning in 2011, both from UCLA. For more information regarding his peer-reviewed research, see here. For Pierce’s full CV, see here.

 

Kian Goh

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Kian Goh is Associate Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She researches the relationships between urban ecological design, spatial politics, and social mobilization in the context of climate change and global urbanization. Dr. Goh’s current research investigates the spatial politics of urban climate change responses, with fieldwork sites in cities in North America, Southeast Asia, and Europe. More broadly, her research interests include urban theory, urban design, environmental planning, and urban political ecology. As a professional architect, she cofounded design firm SUPER-INTERESTING! and has practiced with Weiss/Manfredi and MVRDV. She previously taught at Northeastern University, the University of Pennsylvania, the New School, and Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Goh received a PhD in Urban and Environmental Planning from MIT, and a Master of Architecture from Yale University.

Dr. Goh’s forthcoming book, Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice, will be published by the MIT Press in 2021. The book investigates the contested power relationships and conflicts around plans proposed by cities to respond to climate change impacts. Exploring sites in New York, Jakarta, and Rotterdam, it traces the global flows of ideas and influence in the production and justification of climate change plans, and the local social movements organized against unjust and exclusionary actions.

Recent publications include articles on urban theory and climate justice in Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, urban planning and the Green New Deal in the Journal of the American Planning Association, the politics of urban flooding in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, the global and urban networks of climate change adaptation in Urban Studies, and queer space and activism in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers.