Editorial Team
Faranak Miraftab
Professor of Urban and Regional PlanningUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
Email: faranak@illinois.edu
As an urban scholar of globalization her scholarship is situated at the intersection of geography, planning, and feminist studies, using case study and ethnographic methodologies. A native of Iran, she did her undergraduate studies at the College of Fine Arts at the Tehran University. She graduated with a Master’s degree in Architecture at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim and then completed her doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Over the years her research and teaching has spanned several countries including Chile, Mexico, Canada, Australia, South Africa, the United States, and most recently Togo. Her research interest concerns social aspects of urban development and planning. In this broad area, she is interested in the global and local development processes and contingencies involved in the formation of the city and citizens’ struggles to access dignified livelihood—namely how groups disadvantaged by class, gender, race and ethnicity access resources such as shelter, basic services, and income.
Ken E. Salo
Lecturer in Urban and Regional PlanningUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
Email: kensalo@illinois.edu
Professor Salo teaches and conducts research in the areas of environmental justice, environmental racism, law and international environmental policy, global justice movements, international development and planning, and negotiation and conflict management.
Efadul Huq
Doctoral Student in Urban and Regional PlanningUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
Efadul Huq is a doctoral student and distinguished fellow in the department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He completed his BS in Civil Engineering (with minors in Mathematics and Creative Writing) and holds a Master of Urban Planning. In his current research, Huq is exploring urban climate resilience in cities of the global south. He wants to develop greater understanding of planning complexities related to waterbodies, flooding, and encroachments and is now focusing on Dhaka. More generally, Huq is interested in urban informalities, political ecology, transnational solidarity networks, and people’s planning practices that uphold housing, environmental, and labor rights of marginalized communities. He has worked with several community and student organizations that focus on affordable housing, immigrant-friendly communities, economic justice, and human rights. He is particularly interested in how low-income urban dwellers negotiate with state and private entities to assert their right to the city. He is a poet and artist interested in mixed-media interventions that address urban issues.
Atyeh Ashtari
Doctoral Student in Urban and Regional PlanningUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
Atyeh is a doctoral student in Urban Planning at UIUC. She comes from Iran and was born and raised within the intertwined fabric of a patriarchal society, experiencing gender inequality and its implications each and every day. That is why her research deals with everyday development of urban environment in Iran's poor quarters through gendered practices using feminist social reproduction lens, in particular a radical care approach. Moreover, her studies in architecture, landscape architecture, and planning help her see the built environment on a spectrum and realize the potential of the built environment and public space as mediums of change in combating social injustice issues.
David Aristizábal
Doctoral Student in AnthropologyUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
David is a fourth-year PhD student in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research examines the relationship between waste infrastructures, environmental discourse and policy, and broader processes of violence and marginalization in Colombia’s cities. David currently assists the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) with the development and coordination of OUR’s course-based research program, the Ethnography of the University Initiative. He also served as Co-president of the Graduate Employees’ Organization Local 63100.
