Contributors
The majority of the cases in our library were developed in collaboration with international planning practitioners and action researchers around the world, while some cases were developed by our project staff based on their work. You can read about some of our case contributors below.*
CHARISMA ACEY (NIGERIA CASE)
Charisma Acey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on poverty reduction and urban governance, with an emphasis on inequities in basic services delivery and access to water in the context of local sustainability. Her recent and ongoing research includes fieldwork in Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda exploring the human right to water, gender and participatory governance.
JAHI CHAPPELL (BRAZIL FOOD SYSTEMS CASE)
Jahi Chappell is Senior Staff Scientist at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). There, he provides scientific input for all of IATP’s programs. He has consulted for the FAO, the city of Belo Horizonte, and La Via Campesina. He is past Chair of the Agroecology Section of the Ecological Society of America, and serves on the board of the Open Source Seed Initiative. He holds a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Michigan. His first book about Belo Horizonte, Beginning to End Hunger, will be published by the University of California Press in 2017.
CLARA IRAZÁBAL (COLOMBIA CASE)
Clara Irazábal is the Latin Lab Director and Associate Professor of Urban Planning in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, New York City. She earned her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and has two master degrees. In her research and teaching, she explores the interactions of culture, politics, and placemaking, and their impact on community development and socio-spatial justice in Latin American cities and Latino and immigrant communities. Irazábal has published academic work in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. She is the author of Urban Governance and City Making in the Americas: Curitiba and Portland (Ashgate, 2005) and the editor of Transbordering Latin Americas: Liminal Places, Cultures, and Powers (T)Here (Routledge 2014) and Ordinary Places, Extraordinary Events: Citizenship, Democracy, and Public Space in Latin America (Routledge 2008, 2015). Irazábal has worked as consultant, researcher, and/or professor in Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Germany, Spain, and Vietnam; and has lectured in many other countries.
NICK MACDONALD (SRI LANKA CASE)
Nick Macdonald is a relief and development professional with 20 years of experience working on conflict and displacement issues. He works for Mercy Corps helping the organization to use data to make better quality decisions and improve their work in conflict. He teaches conflict and humanitarianism at the University of Oregon and consults with nonprofits in analytics and social impact.
REBEKAH PACI-GREEN (FORMER SOVIET REPUBLIC CASE STUDY)
Rebekah Paci-Green is an assistant professor of Environmental Studies at Western Washington University where she teaches courses in natural hazards planning and disaster risk reduction. She is also Director of the Resilience Institute, where she oversees projects aimed at reducing disasters and enhancing community resilience. She has worked with countries across Asia to ensure school safety in hazard prone places, and worked with communities in the United States to reduce vulnerability and recover from disasters.
DANIEL M. ROBISON (BOLIVIA CASE)
Daniel M. Robison was born and grew up in Bolivia. He was an exchange student in Thailand and before graduating from university hitchhiked across Africa with his sister from north to south. After graduating from Kansas State University in Natural Resources Management in 1984 he went to Britain as a Marshall Scholar and in 1987 obtained a Ph.D. at the University of Reading, with fieldwork in tropical Bolivia. His life interest is the sustainable use of the Amazon. Between 1988 and 1993 he did postdoctoral work in the Agroecological Studies Unit at CIAT, Colombia. In 1993 he returned to Bolivia as an independent consultant in Protected Areas Management and Agroecology. He lives and farms in Rurrenabaque, the Amazonian gateway to Madidi National Park. Since 2005 he has been Professor in the Future Generations Graduate School.
JENNIFER RUMBACH (KENYA CASE)
Jennifer Rumbach is part of the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) team at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and serves as Focal Point to the UN-GLOBE. She has worked with refugees in countries such as Ghana, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Nepal. She designed the five-module training program, “Working with LGBTI Persons in Forced Displacement and the Humanitarian Context” and has trained more than 1200 staff in 16 countries. She was a Fulbright scholar to Ghana and co-authored, “Sexual and gender minorities in humanitarian emergencies,” in Larry Roeder (Ed.) Disaster Management and Gender and Sexuality.
BJØRN SLETTO (DOMINICAN REPUBLIC CASE)
Bjørn Sletto is an associate professor in the Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning at The University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on indigenous land rights, environmental and social justice, and alternative planning approaches, both in the United States and in Latin America. He is engaged with research on informality and community development in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, focusing on the role of critical pedagogy for insurgent planning in neoliberal contexts. Bjørn also examines the relationship between pedagogy, planning practice, and environmental and social justice in low-income communities in Texas.
SAM TABORY (DOMINICAN REPUBLIC CASE)
Sam Tabory is a graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin affiliated with the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies and the Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning. Sam has been working with the University of Texas’ ongoing collaboration with community residents, civil society representatives, and government officials in the Dominican Republic since 2014. His research interests include pro-poor municipal management and urban governance concerns in the Global South. Prior to graduate school, Sam worked as a project manager for an international non-governmental organization.
ANA PAULA PIMENTEL WALKER (BRAZIL INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS CASE)
Ana Paula Pimentel Walker is an Assistant Professor in Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. Her research examines the outcomes of participatory urban governance from the perspective of those living in informal settlements and Afro-Brazilian territories. Pimentel Walker’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies. She received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, San Diego, master’s degrees in both Urban Planning and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and law degree from Brazil. Pimentel Walker’s research has been published in journals such as Ethos and Economic Anthropology.
TIM BERKE (SOUTH SUDAN CASE)
Tim Berke is a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan in Urban and Regional Planning. His research focuses on post-conflict development, the built environment and public health and collaborative planning. His current research focuses on alternative solutions to refugee camps. Tim was formally the Country Director for IsraAID’s South Sudan. In this position, he oversaw an array of programs (protection, public health, and livelihoods) to increase the capacity of those working with vulnerable communities and to provide sustainable accompaniment to national service providers implementing their own programs to addressing humanitarian challenges. In the past, he has worked with Forcier Consulting, a research consultancy firm in South Sudan and he was also a program specialist for the South Sudan Committee for National Healing, Peace and Reconciliation. In 2013, he graduated with a dual degree at Florida State University (FSU) in Urban and Regional Planning (MSP) and the other in Public Health (MPH).
FARANAK MIRAFTAB (BEARDSTOWN, IL CASE)
Faranak Miraftab is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning with joint appointments in Women and Gender Studies and Geography at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her established transnational feminist urban scholarship focuses on urbanization, citizenship, and insurgent practices of marginalized people based on class, race, and gender in many areas of the world—United States, Middle East, Southern Africa, and Latin America. Her most recent book, Global Heartland: Displaced Labor, Transnational Lives, and Local Placemaking, received the American Sociological Association’s Global & Transnational Sociology Award and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning’s Davidoff book award, and it was a Society for the Study of Social Problems C. Wright Mills book award finalist. Miraftab is currently working on three collaborative projects on intersectional conceptualization of gendered urbanization in global South, co-production of knowledge by academics and urban movements, and trans-local emergent refugee lives across camps and cities in the era of global displacements.
PATRICK BRANDFUL COBBINAH (GHANA CASE)
Patrick is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne. Patrick’s background is in human geography with broad experience in urban and regional planning gained through teaching and research conducted at universities in Ghana and Australia. He was with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology Ghana in 2016-2019 and Charles Sturt University in 2011-2015, and worked in the areas of urban planning and management, urban resilience, environmental management, regional planning, natural resource management, climate change and development of research packages to guide urbanisation and sustainable environmental development in Africa focusing on Ghana. He has also contributed to collaborative projects with researchers at University of Michigan, USA, University of Waterloo, Canada, Georgia State University, USA, Griffith University, Australia, and Wuhan University, China. He is a member of the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) and the Ghana Institute of Planners (GIP), University of Michigan Presidential Scholar, a Visiting Scholar at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) at Stellenbosch University, Cape Town South Africa, Global Young Academy Fellow, and an Adjunct Research Fellow of the Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University. Patrick has published widely in his research area. He serves on the editorial board of Journal of Urban Affairs.
* Several case contributors asked to remain anonymous.