Marie Kennedy

Marie Kennedy is Professor Emerita of Community Planning at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Visiting Professor of Urban Planning at the University of California Los Angeles, where she teaches two graduate seminars:  Community Research and Organizing and Critical Race Studies in Public Affairs.  She combines the roles of activist and scholar, teaching, working in, and writing about transformative community development, planning education and participatory action research.  Marie has supervised numerous collaborative projects through which students learn and earn academic credit while providing research and technical assistance to community organizations focusing on anti-displacement, anti-racist and community empowerment issues.  At UMass Boston, she developed programs through which low-income and previously homeless women were supported in acquiring a college education while focusing their academic work on issues of importance to them and their communities.  Over the years, Marie has worked with and/or written about community and worker organizations and social movements in the Greater Boston Area, as well as in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico and Nicaragua.  Currently, Marie is a member of the advisory committee of Planners Network, co-editor of Progressive Planning, is the president of the board of directors of the Venice Community Housing Corporation and serves on the board of Grassroots International, a human rights and international development aid organization.