Core Team

Director:

Setha Low

Professor or Environmental Psychology, Geography, Anthropology, and Women’s Studies; Director of the Public Space Research Group, CUNY Graduate Center

slow@gc.cuny.edu

Setha Low is Professor of Environmental Psychology, Geography, Anthropology, and Women’s Studies, and Director of the Public Space Research Group at The Graduate Center, CUNY where she teaches courses and trains Ph.D. students in the anthropology of space and place, urban anthropology, culture and environment, and cultural values in historic preservation. She has been awarded a Getty Fellowship, a NEH fellowship, a Fulbright Senior Fellowship and a Guggenheim for her ethnographic research on public space in Latin America and the United States. Her most recent books include: Politics of Public Space (2006 Routledge with Neil Smith), Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity (2005, University of Texas Press with S. Scheld and D. Taplin), and Behind the Gates: Life, Security and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America (2004, Routledge). Her current research is on the impact of private governance on New York City coop residents, working on a collaborative project with Dolores Hayden on Spatial Methods and Public Practices funded by CASBC at Stanford, and writing a book entitled Spatializing Culture: An Anthropological Theory of Space and Place. 

Co-Director:

Fabio Mattioli

PhD Student in Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center

fmattioli@gc.cuny.edu

Fabio Mattioli obtained his BA in Political Philosophy from Florence University (Italy) and his MA in Social Anthropology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris France). Before joining the PhD program in Anthropology, he has been visiting researcher at the university Ss Cyril and Methodius of Skopje, Rep. of Macedonia. Fabio is interested in questions of Urban Anthropology, Aesthetics, Consumption, and Citizenship and teaches Culture and Crime at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is currently exploring the articulation of political economy and subjective experience, looking at how the privatization of urban space in Skopje, Macedonia. He explores the transformation of socialist Macedonia’s  “production” based economy into a “rent” based post-socialist one. How do space translate and reflect the new economic settings? Which kind of rules and practices are enacted? How are they resisted? His secret dream is to learn how to prepare burek.

Organization Team:

Naomi Adiv

PhD Student in Geography, CUNY Graduate Center

Naomi Adiv is a student, writer, and teacher, currently studying Geography at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is interested in urban public spaces, what people mean when they say “the community,” and the purpose of undergraduate education. Naomi is currently completing her dissertation, the Amphibious Public: an historical geography of municipal pools and baths in New York City, 1870 – 2012, participating as a writing fellow at CUNY’s New Community College, and teaching at FIT. In her spare time, she cooks, bikes, dances, and devours print media.

Monica Barra

 PhD Student in Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center

Manissa Maharawal

 PhD Student in Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center

Claire Panetta,

PhD Student in Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center

Claire Panetta is a doctoral student in Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center.  Her research interests are focused on the politics and practices of historic preservation in Cairo’s “old city.”  Her most recent project looked at the work of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in the area of al-Darb al-Ahmar.  Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, she spent two years as a fellow at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad in Cairo.  

Jill Siegel

Emily Curtin

 PhD Student in Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center

Juraj Anzulovic

PhD Student in Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center

My curiosity clusters around the intersection between anthropological theories of value, space, violence and embodiment, and how these theories can help us to better understand the contemporary political transformations occurring within urban environments in South Eastern Europe. Before entrance into the PhD at CUNY I attended the London School of Economics where I achieved a MS in the Anthropology and Development program. Currently, I am an Adjunct Lecture in the Urban Studies Department in Queens College, CUNY.