Faculty Fellows

More than 80 faculty members from 27 departments across the UNC campus are affiliated with the Center through the Faculty Fellows program. At any time, these experts interested in urban and regional issues, along with Center staff and graduate students, are conducting approximately 40 research projects. The Center offers a wide range of services to Faculty Fellows and their students including support for research proposal development and submission, funded research project administration and research dissemination.

Whitney Afonso, Associate Professor, School of Government
Ph.D. University of Georgia
Research: Public administration; public budgeting and finance; local government finance

Simon Alder, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics
Ph.D. University of Zurich, Switzerland
Research: economic growth and development; trade; regional economics; political economy; macroeconomics; applied econometrics

Robert C. Allen, Professor, American Studies
Ph.D. University of Iowa
Research: Historical forms of popular culture and entertainment; development of forms of advertising; commercial cinema; consumer culture

Alice Ammerman, Director, Center for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention
Dr.PH. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Research: Design and testing of innovative clinical and community-based nutrition and physical activity intervention approaches for chronic disease risk reduction in primarily low-income and minority populations

Kenneth “Andy” Andrews, Department Chair/Professor, Sociology
Ph.D. State University of New York at Stony Brook
Research: Organizational dimensions of social movements and the impacts of social movements on polical and social change

Florence E. Babb, Professor, Anthropology
Ph.D. State University of New York at Buffalo
Research: Cultural/economic/feminist anthropology; gender, race, and sexuality; critical development studies; urbanization in the global South; tourism studies; Latin American studies; Central Andes, Central America.

Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Research: Spatial and temporal analysis as a means for better understanding environmental systems and environmental policies and their problems.

Michele Tracy Berger, Associate Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies
Ph.D. University of Michigan
Research: Politics of deviance; constitutional law; gender, drugs and culture; women, crime and deviance; feminist legal theory; women of color; women and politics.

Ph.D. Texas A&M University
Research: The relationship between community resilience and urban planning with specific focus on methods, theory and metrics of local planning and outcomes.

Maureen Berner, Professor, School of Government
Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin
Research: Public administration and policy; federal budget policy; public sector; state and local budgeting with focus on social services; interconnection between government and nonprofits.

Brian Billman, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Ph.D. University of California at Santa Barbara
Research: Prehistory of Andean South America; evolution of complex political organizations (chiefdoms, states and empires); causes and consequences of warfare; origins of social stratification; cultural ecology; settlement pattern analysis; and the prehistory of southwestern North America

Anita R. Brown-Graham, Professor, School of Government
J.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Research: Citizen participation and civic involvement, public policy, workforce development

Raymond J. Burby, Professor Emeritus, City & Regional Planning
Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Research: Identification of factors affecting the adoption and effectiveness of measures to mitigate natural and technological hazards; development of improved procedures for involving citizens in urban and environmental planning; identifying factors that enhance the effectiveness smart growth and growth management systems; finding ways to counter environmental racism and injustice in planning and urban development decision-making; and improving the enforcement of and compliance with development management regulations

Neal Caren, Associate Professor, Sociology
Ph.D. New York University 
Research: Quantitative analysis of protest and social movements; intersection of place and political action; environmental justice movement and pollution disparities

Xiaodong Chen, Associate Professor, Geography
Ph.D. Michigan State University
Research: coupled human and natural systems; how human activities affect the natural environment; how human livelihood may be changed due to changes in environmental conditions; what are complex interactions among components in human and natural systems; and how human-environment interactions are influenced by policies.

Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld, Professor, Anthropology and Senior Associate Dean for Social Sciences and Global Programs in the College of Arts and Sciences
Ph.D. UCLA
Research: Indigenous peoples, artisan economies, competition, commodities, consumer cultures, producer associations, local food systems

Sarah E. Dempsey, Associate Professor, Communication
Ph.D. University of Colorado, Boulder
Research: Organizational communication; The values and practices animating recent efforts to create living wage certification programs and promote higher wages in North Carolina. Set in the context of independent restaurants, her project brings together multiple perspectives to stage a conversation around wages and the future of work in the food service industry.

Michael Emch, Professor, Geography
Ph.D. Michigan State University
Research: Medical geography/spatial epidemiology; infectious diseases in the developing world; neighborhood-level effects on health and healthcare including violence and suicide

Kelly Evenson, Research Professor, Epidemiology, School of Public Health
Ph.D. University of North Carolina
Research: Physical activity

Maryann P. Feldman, Professor, Public Policy
Ph.D. Carnegie Mellon University
Research: Entrepreneurship, economic growth, innovation

Michael A. Figueroa, Assistant Professor, Music
Ph.D. University of Chicago
Research: Music and political consciousness in Middle Eastern and African American contexts; music and poetry, performance studies, black music; historiography, global popular music, critical theory, diaspora studies, media and technology, and the analysis of timbre.

Erik S. Gellman, Associate Professor, History
Ph.D. Northwestern University
Research: Working-class and urban life, visual culture and comparative social movements in modern American history.

Banu Gökarıksel, Professor, Geography
Ph.D. University of Washington at Seattle 
Research: Urban geography of modernity, neo-liberalism, and globalization; social geography of contested spaces; and the formation of identities and subjectivities with a focus on gender

Carmen Gutierrez, Assistant Professor, Public Policy
Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin
Research: issues at the intersection of immigration, the criminal justice system and health, with an emphasis on how inequalities arise across race, ethnicity and citizenship.

Penny Gordon-Larsen, Professor, Nutrition, School of Public Health
Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania
Research: Patterns and determinants of obesity in U.S. adolescents; environmental determinants of physical activity; ethnicity and obesity in U.S. adolescents; obesity epidemiology; nutrition epidemiology; obesity-related community intervention, body image and attitudes

Jacqueline M. Hagan, Professor, Sociology
Ph.D. University of Texas, Austin
Research: International migration; social policy; religion; human rights

Jill V. Hamm, Professor, School of Education
Ph.D. University of Wisconsin at Madison
Research: Social development; adolescent identity development; adolescent cross-race relationships; adolescent peer relationships; gender and ethnicity factors in teaching mathematics

Julia Haslett, Assistant Professor, Communication
M.F.A., Hunter College–CUNY (Integrated Media Arts)
Research: Documentary filmmaking with a focus on 20th-century intellectual history, ethics, environmental humanities and conservation; China; East Asian Art; and aesthetic strategies to interpret and represent science and nature

Elizabeth Havice, Associate Professor, Geography
Ph.D. University of California-Berkeley
Research: Political economy, political ecology, international development, commodity studies, agrarian studies, environmental politics, natural resources, property, corporate power, science studies

Miyuki Hino, Assistant Professor, City & Regional Planning 
Ph.D. Stanford University
Research: Linkages between natural hazards, governance and public policy, with a particular focus on sea level rise and flooding.

Michele Hoyman, Associate Professor, Political Science
Ph.D. University of Michigan 
Research: Union democracy; civil rights compliance of labor unions; litigiousness of workers; training, including joint labor management training programs; economic development; gender and arbitration; prisons as rural economic development trophies

Melissa Jacoby, Professor, School of Law
J.D. University of Pennsylvania
Research: Bankruptcy and ways in which debtor-creditor laws are used to manage various kinds of household risk, including risks of home mortgage default and foreclosure

James H. Johnson, Jr., Professor, Kenan-Flagler School of Business
Ph.D. Michigan State University
Research: Community and economic development; the effects of demographic changes on the U.S. workplace; interethnic minority conflict in advanced industrial societies; urban poverty and public policy in urban America; workforce diversity issues; the economic impact of Sept. 11 on U.S. metropolitan communities

Nikhil Kaza, Professor, City & Regional Planning 
Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 
Research: The nature of plans; complexity of urban systems and the institutional responses to them

Thomas A. Kelley, III, Professor, School of Law
J.D. Northeastern University 
Research: Community development; nonprofit organizations and community development; for-profit organizations that embrace charitable corporate missions; international law and development in West Africa

Scott L. Kirsch, Professor, Geography
Ph.D. University of Colorado at Boulder
Research: Historical, cultural, political geography; science studies; social theory

Noah Kittner, Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, City & Regional Planning, and the Environment, Ecology and Energy Program
Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley
Research: Sustainable energy systems; modeling environmental impacts of energy systems; energy transition; solar electric mini-grids; distributed energy systems; energy, climate, and health research; Southeast Asia; the Balkans

Christian C. Lentz, Associate Professor, Geography
Ph.D. Cornell University
Research: Development, state formation, nationalism, nature-society relations, agrarian studies, Southeast Asia

T. William Lester, Associate Professor, City & Regional Planning
Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley
Research: Role of labor market institutions in fostering greater equity at the urban and metropolitan scales; employment and job quality prospects of the “green economy”

Laura Linnan, Professor, School of Public Health
Sc.D. Harvard University
Research: Prevention and control of chronic diseases, especially cancer, with a concentration on applied research efforts in worksites and other community-based settings

Adam Lovelady, Associate Professor, School of Government
J.D. University of Virginia
Research: the intersection of urban planning and land use law; zoning; land subdivision; transportation; renewable energy; redevelopment; and historic preservation.

Nichola Lowe, Professor, City & Regional Planning
Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Research: Urban and regional economic development; support institutions for innovation; industrial upgrading and entrepreneurship; small enterprise and workforce development

Emil Malizia, Research Professor, City & Regional Planning
Ph.D. Cornell University
Research: Economic development; commercial real estate market research and feasibility methods and techniques; urban redevelopment; development finance

Catherine Marshall, Professor, School of Education
Ph.D. University of California, Santa Barbara
Research: Politics of education, organizational processes, cultural politics, gender issues, feminist analyses of power and ethics

Nina Martin, Associate Professor, Geography
Ph.D. University of Illinois, Chicago
Research: Local economic development and patterns of migration; impact of immigration on labor markets; community; civil society responses to conflicts in the low-wage labor market; informal economy in U.S. cities; workers in the informal economy; street vendors

Noreen McDonald, Department Chair/Professor, City & Regional Planning
Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley 
Research: How the social environment, as well as the built environment, affects travel behavior, particularly where children are allowed to walk within their communities

Townsend Middleton, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Ph.D. Cornell University
Research: Political anthropology; anthropology of knowledge; recognition, belonging, and autonomy; subnationalist politics; affect and anxiety; post/colonialism; South Asia; India; Nepal

Torin Monahan, Professor, Communication
Ph.D. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Research: Surveillance and security; smart cities; organizational change; technological design and innovation; qualitative research methods

David H. Moreau, Research Professor, City & Regional Planning and Environmental Science and Engineering
Ph.D. Harvard University
Research: Analysis, planning, financing, and evaluation of water and related environmental programs

Jonathan Q. Morgan, Associate Professor, School of Government 
Ph.D., North Carolina State University 
Research: Transformational economic development strategies; state and local economic development policy trends; and analytical tools for economic development

Ricardo Morse, Associate Professor, School of Government
Ph.D., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Research: Community collaboration, public participation, public leadership, public policy

Jeremy Moulton, Associate Professor, Public Policy
Ph.D. University of California, Davis
Research: Labor economics, public economics, applied microeconometrics, self-employment/entrepreneurship,
real estate, retirement

Ted Mouw, Professor, Sociology
Ph.D. University of Michigan
Research: Labor markets; stratification; economic sociology; demography; social structure of labor markets; social and residential segregation in U.S. urban areas; gender occupational segregation and demographic change in Indonesia

C. Tyler Mulligan, Professor, School of Government
J.D. Yale University
Research: Community development, affordable housing, economic development

Donald M. Nonini, Professor, Anthropology
Ph.D. Stanford University
Research: Urban anthropology; transnationalism; political economy and cultural politics with special reference to the Chinese diaspora in urban Southeast Asia and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific; urban settings characterized by racial and class divisions in the urban American South

Caela O’Connell, Assistant Professor, Anthropology and the Environment, Ecology and Energy Program
Ph.D. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Research: Environmental anthropology; human-environment relationships; socio-ecological interdependencies; risk; crisis; change; anthropologies of water, economics, disaster, and engagement; interdisciplinary and mixed research methodologies; food and agricultural studies; rural and agrarian communities; the Caribbean and the Americas

Elizabeth Olson, Department Chair/Professor, Geography and Professor, Global Studies
Ph.D. University of Colorado
Research: Geographies of religion, critical development studies, and youth and childhood studies

Patricia Parker, Department Chair/Associate Professor, Communication
Ph.D. University of Texas, Austin
Research: Critical studies of gender, race, and culture in organizations; communication strategies and leadership behaviors of African American women executives within dominant culture organizations

Obed Pasha, Assistant Professor, School of Government
Joint Ph.D. Georgia State University and Georgia Tech
Research: Use and impact of performance management in criminal justice and public transportation

Krista Perreira, Professor of Social Medicine, School of Medicine
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley
Research: Child development; demography of immigration; health economics and policy; Latino health and education; mental health and substance abuse; methods in public policy analysis; welfare and Medicaid policy

John Pickles, Professor, Geography
Ph.D. The Pennsylvania State University
Research: Globalization, political economy, development, justice, and social action, particularly on economic geographies of apartheid and anti-apartheid; post-socialist regional economic transformations; geographies of social movements and autonomous development; regional economic change in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Bulgaria and southeast Europe; violence and ethnic minority populations and regions

Danielle Purifoy, Assistant Professor, Geography
Ph.D. Duke University, J.D. Harvard University
Research: Racial politics of development in the US South, particularly in the development of Black towns and settlements, and how they are linked to discourse and empirical studies of environmental racism; How Black localities create new possibilities for relationships to land, property and community that are often antagonized by dominant forms of governance.

Roberto Quercia, Professor, City & Regional Planning
Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Research: Housing finance and policy

Alexandrea J. Ravenelle, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Ph.D. City University of New York
Research: Work, organizations and occupations, social stratification, economy and society, qualitative research, entrepreneurship

Diego Riveros-Iregui, Associate Professor, Geography
Ph.D. Montana State University
Research: Ecohydrology, watershed hydrology, biogeochemistry, land-atmosphere interactions, tropical hydrology, climate and land use/land cover change

William M. Rohe, Professor, City & Regional Planning; Faculty Associate, Center for Urban & Regional Studies
Ph.D. Pennsylvania State University
Research: Housing, community development, neighborhood change, evaluation of housing programs, impact of crime on community institutions

Eunice Sahle, Department Chair/Associate Professor, African, African American, and Diaspora Studies
Ph.D. Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada 
Research: Global political economy, critical development studies African Diasporic formations in Canada and Europe refugee studies and political economy of displacement, social movements, democracy, human rights and citizenship, feminist political economy, political economy of global cities, and cultural production

David Salvesen, Director, Sustainable Triangle Field Site, Institute for the Environment
Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
Research: Land-use policies, issues and trends and their impact on the environment and the quality and character of communities; smart growth; school location and design; natural hazard mitigation; and wetlands protection

Brigitte Seim, Assistant Professor, Public Policy
Ph.D. University of California, San Diego
Research: Comparative politics, political economy of development; the relationship between citizens and political officials, with a particular emphasis on accountability in consolidating democracies; corruption, taxation, and accountability in Malawi and Zambia.

Karla Slocum, Associate Professor, Anthropology; Director, Institute of African American Research
Ph.D. University of Florida
Research: Globalization, social movements, race anthropology and development, gender, applied and public anthropology, Caribbean and U.S. Southwest

Sara H. Smith, Associate Professor, Geography
Ph.D. University of Arizona at Tucson 
Research: Political and social geography, nationalism, health, South Asia.

Yan Song, Professor, City & Regional Planning; Director, Program on Chinese Cities
Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Research: Land-use planning and regulations; smart growth; economics of land use regulations; spatial analysis of urban form; physical planning and urban design; modeling on links between built environment and travel behavior; and how to accommodate research in above fields by using planning supporting systems such as GIS and other computer-aided planning tools.

Danielle Spurlock, Assistant Professor, City & Regional Planning
Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Research: Planning, public health, environmental and social justice, and dispute resolution; social stratification and its impact of the siting of hazardous land uses; social vulnerability and emergency preparedness; and the impact of land use decisions on ecosystems services.

John B. Stephens, Associate Professor, School of Government
Ph.D., George Mason University
Research: Public dispute resolution, conflict assessment, training and direct mediation and facilitation.

Angela Stuesse, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin
Research: social inequality, neoliberal globalization, migration, race, labor, human rights, and methodologies of activist research.

Meenu Tewari, Associate Professor, City & Regional Planning
Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Research: International economic development, local industrialization, poverty alleviation, small firms, and the urban informal economy

Allie Thomas, Assistant Professor, City & Regional Planning
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley
Research: International sustainable transportation policies and practices, ethnographic research methods.

Karolyn Tyson, Associate Chair/Professor, Sociology
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley
Research: Sociology of education, qualitative research methods, race and ethnic relations, and social psychology

Gabriela Valdivia, Associate Professor, Geography
Ph.D. University of Minnesota at Minneapolis
Research: Latin America, human-environment interactions, critical resource geography, political ecology

Robin Visser, Associate Chair/Associate Professor, Asian Studies; Deputy Director, Program on Chinese Cities
Ph.D. Columbia University
Research: Contemporary Chinese urban aesthetics in relations to globalization, urban-rural dichotomies, subjectivity and space, privacy, and narrative ethics

Anna Waller, Research Professor, Emergency Medicine, School of Medicine
Sc.D. Johns Hopkins University
Research: Injury prevention and control particularly in preventing injury related to physical activity and sports participation.

Colin Thor West, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Ph.D. University of Arizona
Research: Human ecology of global change; ways in which societies adapt to the twin processes of global environmental and social change.

Richard B. Whisnant, Professor, School of Government
J.D. Harvard 
Research: Environmental and administrative law; community-based approaches to environmental issues; media and environmental issues.

Andrew H. Whittemore, Assistant Professor, City & Regional Planning
Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles
Research: Urban form and design, planning history and theory, land use planning and zoning, primarily in the North American context

Dale Whittington, Professor, City & Regional Planning and Environmental Sciences and Engineering
Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin
Research: Evaluation of water and sanitation projects in developing countries; public investment theory and techniques; water resources policy and planning

Rachel Willis, Professor, American Studies
Ph.D. Northwestern University
Research: Applied microeconomics; service learning; leadership development; public service components of classwork

Erika Wise, Associate Professor, Geography
Ph.D. University of Arizona at Tucson
Research: Climatology, dendrochronology, water resources