Events

CONFERENCE

Imagining Community: A Graduate Student Conference on Space, Place, and the Possibilities of Belonging

April 10, 2026
Paul Robeson Campus Center

This conference is co-organized by graduate students in American Studies and in Global Urban Studies (Joint PhD Program in Urban Systems), with support from Rutgers Global and Graduate School Newark. We thank the graduate student organizers: Fernanda Espinosa, Chelsea Wong, Lauren Holt, Gilbert Nuwagira, Nooreen Fatima, and Colleen O’Neal.

Dr. Diane Wong offered the keynote presentation for the conference.

For more information, including the conference schedule and panel participants, visit the conference page.

FILM SCREENING & DISCUSSION

When I Say Africa

April 8, 2026 
Screening: 2:30-3:50 P.M.
Discussion: 4:00-5:00 P.M.
Dana Room (Dana Library 404)
Food will be served

When I Say Africa turns the lens on the West’s stereotypes of Africa from the first European adventurers’ sketches to pop culture today. The filmmakers expose the deep-rooted power dynamics that shape images of the continent. When I Say Africa challenges viewers to confront the real costs of these representations.

The film’s executive producer joins alumni and current students in Global Urban Studies to discuss urban research conducted in Africa and the role of filmmakers and social science scholars in understanding the continent.

Sponsored by Global Urban Studies (Joint PhD Program in Urban Systems), Graduate School-Newark, and a Rutgers-Newark Cultural Programming Grant. GUS celebrates its 10th year in 2026.

Speakers:

Sean Jacobs is Professor of International Affairs at The New School, where he serves as Director of the Julien J. Studley Graduate Programs in International Affairs. He founded and edited (2009-2023) Africa Is a Country. Before academia, Sean worked as a journalist and researcher. He has held fellowships (Fulbright, Shorenstein, Commonwealth, Shuttleworth, and Mellon), and his work has been rewarded with funding from the Open Society Foundation, the 11th Hour Project, and the Ford Foundation.

Tolu Lanrewaju-Kadri is an urban sociologist and strategist aiming to bridge research and practice. Through her dissertation, which focused on refugees in Cape Town, Tolu challenges traditional narratives by showcasing the strength, resourcefulness, and activism of those facing adversity. Her research emphasizes how individuals navigate challenges and shape cities.

Marie-Jeanne Ndimbira-Rosner is a veteran educator, challenge-driven justice seeker, and advocate with over two decades of experience focusing on youth empowerment and education in Namibia. Her dissertation focuses on the value of holistic afterschool programs to improving education outcomes for poor Black students in Namibia and South Africa.

Gilbert Nuwagira has worked extensively with forced migrants in Kampala and settlements across Uganda. He has also coordinated projects with civil society organizations in Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. His research and practice interests include: how migrants participate in city-making and how urban policies either include or exclude them.

DIALOGUES IN GLOBAL URBAN STUDIES — SPRING 2026

Dissertation Defense Practice Sessions

Join us to support students who are preparing to defend their dissertations.

In each session, a student will practice presenting their dissertation research. This will be followed by a Q&A period.

Show support for your fellow students and familiarize yourself with dissertation defense presentations by attending these sessions and offering feedback to your fellow students.

Session 1: Jayati Narain
“The Formalization of Forgetting: Spatial & Structural Inequality in Delhi”
March 3, 12:15-1:30pm
via Zoom

Session 2: Ang Liu
“The Hidden Leveraged City: Financialized Housing, Urbanism and Governance in China”
March 10, 12:15-1:30pm
in Hill Hall 628
Food will be served

Session 3: Ana Sandoval
“Trenzando Fronteras: Border Children, Revolutionary Imagination, and the Seeds of Radical Hope”
April 14, 1:00-2:15pm
Via Zoom

DIALOGUES IN GLOBAL URBAN STUDIES — FALL 2025

GUS Dialogues in Urban Development

December 9, 2025
Noon-1:30pm
Hill Hall Room 628 (Sociology & Anthropology Conference Room)

Enjoy lunch and a discussion featuring research by GUS students. This event’s featured discussants and their topics:

“Post-war Reconstruction,” Ghada Rifai

“Transnational Gentrification,” Tamara Velasquez Leiferman

“Urban Derisking,” Joshua McWhirter

GLOBAL URBAN STUDIES “HOW TO” SERIES— FALL 2025

How to Navigate the IRB Process

November 13, 2025
6:00-7:00pm
Via Zoom

Join us for a discussion about navigating IRB process. Panelists Dr. Diane Wong and GUS PhD Candidate Adam Straub will share their experience navigating ethical concerns, working with IRB reviewers, and more.

GLOBAL URBAN STUDIES “HOW TO” SERIES— FALL 2025

How to Apply for Grants

November 13, 2025
4:00-5:00pm
Via Zoom

Join us for a discussion about navigating the grant writing process. Panelists Dr. Nermin Allam and Dr. Kimberly DaCosta Holton will offer insight into identifying opportunities, navigating requirements, and more.

DIALOGUES IN GLOBAL URBAN STUDIES — FALL 2025

GUS Dialogues in Migration

November 4, 2025
Noon-1:30pm
Hill Hall Room 628 (Sociology & Anthropology Conference Room)

Enjoy lunch and a discussion featuring research by GUS students. This event’s featured discussants and their topics:

“Labels and Categories,” Mustafa Hoshmand

“Migrant Community Organization,” Roula Seghaier

“Humanitarian Urbanism,” Gilbert Nuwagira

GLOBAL URBAN STUDIES “HOW TO” SERIES— FALL 2025

How to Apply for Postdoctoral and Faculty Positions

October 28, 2025
6:00-7:00pm
Via Zoom

Join us for a discussion about navigating the job market. Panelists Dr. Erica Salinas Thomas and Dr. Juhwan Seo will offer insight into the application process, from identifying opportunities to preparing materials and beyond.

CONFERENCE

Emerging Research in Urban Systems Student Conference

April 2 & 9, 2025
11:30am-3:30pm
110 Warren Room 148

Join us for a student-led conference featuring doctoral students presenting emerging work in Global Urban Studies, Technology, and Environment from the Joint PhD program in Urban Systems at Rutgers-Newark and NJIT. Lunch will be served.

Conference Schedule:

Day 1: April 2

11:30am-12:30pm: Lunch

12:30-1:45: Panel 1: Collective Action – Justice Movements in Urban Contexts Around the World
Chair: Nooreen Fatima
• Adam Straub, “Housing Politics in Crisis: The Uneven Emergence of Housing Justice Activism in Newark & Jersey City, NJ”
• Amanda Sweeney, “Transforming Community: The Rise of Mutual Aid and Grassroots Organizations in Times of Crisis”
• Cintia Martins Freitas, “Democratic Innovation through Collective Mandates in Brazil”
• Kristina Micu, “What’s Faith Got to do with it? The Evangelical Church Planting Movement in the Philippines and the United States”

2:00-3:15: Panel 2: Intelligent Systems for Sustainable and Adaptive Built Environments
Chair: Biplav Pokhrel
• Kaiheng Zhang, “Evaluating Window-to-Wall Ratio in Generative AI Architectural Design: Insights from SHAP Analysis and Predictive Modeling”
• Mingzhe Li, “GAN-Based Multi-Objective Optimization for Architectural  Massing Generation: Building Performance, Environmental Adaptability, and Energy Efficiency Optimization”
• Mohammad Saleh Nikoopayan, “Open Data-Based Machine Learning Investigation of Indoor Thermal Comfort Analytics”

Day 2: April 9

11:30am-12:30pm: Lunch

12:30-1:45: Panel 3: Navigating Uncertainty: Refugee Experiences, Integration, and Resistance Across Borders
Chair: Joshua McWhirter
• Dr. Tolu Lanrewaju-Kadri, “The Temporalities and Tactics of Living Uncertainty: Refugee Residential Mobility in Cape Town, SA”
• Mustafa Hoshmand, “Refugee Resettlement in the United States: A GIS Analysis”
• Roula Seghaier, “Breaking the Perimeter: Protest, Space, and Refugee Political Agency in Lebanon “
• Ana Sandoval, “Concepts from the Margins: Reimagining Governance and Belonging Through Border Children’s Lived Experiences”

2:00-3:15: Panel 4: Reflexive Shaping, The Mutually Constitutive Relationship of Urban Spaces, Population Perceptions, and Planning Technologies
Chair: Tamara Velasquez Leiferman
• Chayce Kenny, “‘Civilizing’ Nature: Understanding Wild vs Planned Approaches to Native Growth in Urban Spaces and their Social/Ecological Ramifications”
• Biplav Pokhrel, “Assessing Resident Perceptions of Indoor Environmental Quality in Low-Income Urban Housing”
• Mansi Shah, “Making Place and Meaning in New Jersey: Exploring the relationship between Identity and Urban Morphology”
• Josefine Ziebell, “Carceral Environments: Mapping Connections of Climate Injustice”

READING & WORKSHOP

Writing the Unseen: Between Translation and Transparency

March 31, 2025
4-6pm on March 31
Shine Portrait Studio (EN 319)
54 Halsey Street, Newark NJ

Both within and outside the academy, it is common to associate translation with a specific kind of difficulty: fully conveying the meaning and sense of the original. The role of the translator, in this commonsense view, is to make the original text transparent in a new context, in a new language, keeping in mind relevant aesthetic, political and ethical questions.

Departing from this commonsense view of translation, this workshop will consider the possibility that the “original” text is already strange, emerging from relations and layered histories the translator cannot completely grasp. The translator, in this view, does not have privileged knowledge of the original with a specific kind of burden. The translator is rather an obsessive and excessive reader who attends to the opacity of the original, always involved in transmitting knowledge that has arrived from beyond what they can grasp in the present. Using Safa Khatib’s translation of the two opening chapters of Roula Seghaier’s Memory of Pavement (Saqi Books, 2015) as a point of departure, we will engage in a collective conversation on the relevance of translation to all practices of transmitting knowledge across contexts, whether in scholarship, artistic work, political organizing, or the rhythms of daily life.

Refreshments will be served.

STUDENT SEMINAR SERIES — SPRING 2025

Academic & Industry Jobs

March 12, 2025
1:00-2:00pm
Engelhard Hall 215

Join us for a student-organized discussion featuring Dr. Nakeefa Cilicia Bernard (GUS, RU-N, 2024), Sr. Program Director at the Joseph C. Cornwall Center. for Metropolitan Studies; Theresa O’Neill, Sr. Program Coordinator, RU-N’s Office of Career Resources and Exploration; and Dr. Kaveh Samiei, Assistant Professor of Building Systems and Energy at The New School.

GRADUATE STUDENT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SERIES – SPRING 2019

The Journey from Coursework to Dissertation

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Join two postdoctoral fellows from the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies for an in-dept discussion on how to connect coursework to the dissertation proposal, and to develop and complete a successful dissertation! Drs. Broege and Clay both conduct research in the field of educational inequality, using innovative methods that shed new light on this longstanding set of problems.

Dr. Nora Broege received her PhD in Sociology from UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on racial and ethnic inequality, sociology of education, and quantitative methods. Her dissertation, Race and the Subjective Experience of Schooling: Micro-Sociological Explanations of Adolescent Achievement, is a multi-method study of 200 high school students. Her primary method, a time diary technique, allows her to track her students throughout their daily routines, across company and context. Her findings posit explanations of the racial/ethnic academic achievement gap grounded in self-reported socioemotional experience as well as traditional performance.

Dr. Kevin L. Clay is a native of New Jersey where he attended the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education, earning his PhD in Educational Theory, Organization, and Policy. Kevin’s research derives form his experience facilitating youth participatory action research in a youth pre-college program, where he explored how young people negotiated political views in relation to questions of race/ism, inequality, and social change. For his study, he was awarded the 2017 National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship.

GRADUATE STUDENT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SERIES – SPRING 2019

Practices and Perils in Bridging Academic and Public Scholarship

Rosana Pinheiro-Machado, PhD
Social Scientist & Anthropologist
Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Rosana Pinheiro-Machado is a social scientist and an anthropologist at the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM, Brazil). Previously, she was a Lecturer at the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford, and held visiting positions at University of São Paulo and Harvard University. She is the author of the award-winning book Counterfeit Itineraries in the Global South (Routledge 2017) as well as numerous peer-review journal articles. With Dr. Lucia Scalco, Pinheiro-Machado has been carrying out ethnographic research on the ‘politics of the poor’ since 2009. They are currently completing a book manuscript entitled: From Hope to Hate: Poverty and Politics in Brazil’s Lula and Bolsonaro. Funded by the Australian Research Council, she is part of a team examining the new consumer practices in the Global South (Mexico, Brazil, China, and the Philippines). Pinheiro-Machado also acts as a public intellectual and writes for The Intercept Brasil.

LECTURE

GUS BROWN BAG SERIES

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Dana Room
Rutgers University – Newark

Geci Karuri-Sebina, PhD
Research Associate, Institute for Economic Research on Innovation
Associate, South African Cities Network

About Dr. Geci Karuri-Sebina:

Geci Karuri-Sebina is an African urban dweller and thinker. Professionally, she was most recently the Executive Manager: Programmes at South African Cities Network, a peer-based think tank established by South Africa’s largest cities to focus on improving urban development and governance. Geci holds Master’s degrees in Urban Planning, and in Architecture & Urban Design, both from UCLA, and a PhD from the University of Witwatersrand (planning and innovation systems). Her interests span a range of development foresight, policy, planning and practice topics, particularly relating to urban governance, the built environment and innovation systems. She has over two decades’ experience working and publishing in these fields, including co-editing the Innovation Africa book series (Emerald Books 2016, 2019).

About the GUS Brown Bag Series
GUS (Global Urban Studies) Brown Bag Series is an opportunity for GUS doctoral students to meet with prominent scholars and practitioners in an intimate setting, and to discuss and dialogue about research and practice, that of the invited guest(s) and their own.

LECTURE

GUS BROWN BAG SERIES

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Dana Room
Rutgers University – Newark

René Kreichauf, PhD
Researcher, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Brussels, Belgium

Refugees in the City:
The Role of Refugees in the Reconfiguration of the Urban and the Development of Local Asylum

This presentation exemplifies how the city, its institutions, and society shape the arrival of refugees and how refugee migration impacts and reconfigures the urban. It focuses on current conflicts between national politics, local response, and immigrants’ interests in the US and the EU in the field of immigration and asylum to illustrate that the recent arrival of refugees push local administrations, communities and organizations to develop progressive strategies and policies of compassion contrasting hostile state politics. Its main argument is that the arrival of refugees results in the rescaling of the urban and the re-positioning of the city as both an actor in immigration debates and as a context to study immigration processes.

About the GUS Brown Bag Series
GUS (Global Urban Studies) Brown Bag Series is an opportunity for GUS doctoral students to meet with prominent scholars and practitioners in an intimate setting, and to discuss and dialogue about research and practice, that of the invited guest(s) and their own.

PANEL DISCUSSION

Takeover:
A Conversation on Race, Education and Democracy in Urban America

Thursday March 8, 2018
4:00pm

Paul Roberson Campus Center 255-257
Rutgers University – Newark

The Honorable Ras J. Baraka, Mayor, Newark, NJ
Domingo Morel, PhD, Author of Takeover: Race, Education and American Democracy, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Rutgers University – Newark
Moderator: Christina Greer, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Fordham University

LECTURE

Spatial Negotiations:
Inscribing Nation and Islam in Public Space

Bülent Batuman, PhD
Chair, Department of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture
Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

Tuesday, February 21, 2018

Turricula Seminar Room (CLJ 395)
Rutgers Law School
123 Washington St
Newark NJ 07102

Throughout the world, state-led undertakings have shaped the built environment to achieve nationalist representations referring to Islam. The most visible sites of such representations aiming to (re)configure the imagination of people are the public spaces designed to symbolize the nation.

This talk will discuss the cases of Turkey, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Malaysia and the reconfiguration of public spaces in these countries. Although Islam has played a different political role in each of these cases, seeking globally relevant yet locally effective images referring to Islam has been a common trait in the cities of Ankara, Astana, Ashgabat and Putrajaya.

About Dr. Bülent Batuman
Bülent Batuman studied architecture at the Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey) and received his Ph.D. in History and Theory of Art and Architecture from SUNY–Binghamton. He teaches urban design and politics of modern urbanism in the Department of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture at Bilkent University, where he is the Department Chair.

His current research focuses on the architectural politics of Islamism in Turkey and his latest book New Islamist Architecture and Urbanism: Negotiating Nation and Islam through Built Environment in Turkey is forthcoming from Routledge. Dr. Batuman is currently a Fulbright scholar at Penn State University.

LECTURE

GUS BROWN BAG SERIES

Friday, December 8, 2017

Dana Room
Rutgers University – Newark

Kusum Mundra, PhD
Associate Professor, Dept. of Economics
Rutgers University

About Dr. Kusum Mundra:

In addition to being an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Rutgers University Newark, Kusum Mundra, is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) Bonn, Fellow at the Global Labor Organization, and an affiliated faculty of Global Urban Studies at Rutgers Newark. Much of her research interests focuses on economic issues related to immigration, particularly the role of immigrant social networks. Her other research interests are applied econometrics, nonparametric and semi parametric panel data, terrorism and conflict and gender topics. She has worked on issues ranging from the effect of immigrant networks on immigrant homeownership, role of immigrants’ legal status on homeownership, effect of immigrant diasporas on trade, role of social networks on immigrant earnings, healthcare reforms and access to healthcare for immigrant women, empirical investigation of suicide bombing events and semi parametric panel data estimation. She has published in International Migration Review, Demography, American Economic Review- Papers and Proceedings, Journal of Applied Economics, Review of International Economics, Journal of International Trade and Economic Development, Terrorism and Political Violence, Handbook of Applied Econometrics and Statistical Inferences, and the Frontiers of Economics and Globalization – Migration and Culture, among others.

About the GUS Brown Bag Series
GUS (Global Urban Studies) Brown Bag Series is an opportunity for GUS doctoral students to meet with prominent scholars and practitioners in an intimate setting, and to discuss and dialogue about research and practice, that of the invited guest(s) and their own.

GUS BROWN BAG TALK:

Gender, Class, & Race in the Rio de Janeiro Sex Market

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Dana Room
Rutgers University – Newark

Thaddeus Blanchette, PhD
Professor
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Dr. Thaddeus Blanchette is an anthropologist studying “gringos”, immigration, prostitution, sexual tourism and the trafficking of women in Brazil and has written extensively on these topics for academic journals and popular magazines in Brazil, the United States, and Europe. With his wife and co-researcher Ana Paula da Silva, he has mapped Rio’s commercial sex and tourism industry. He works in tandem with Davida, a local prostitutes’ rights association, Prostitution Policy Watch and the Brazilian Prostitutes’ Network to combat the stigmatization and criminalization of sex workers.

Ana Paula da Silva, PhD
Professor
Federal Fluminense University, Brazil

Dr. Ana Paula da Silva is an anthropologist focusing on race, gender, sports anthropology, prostitution, sexual tourism, and trafficking of women. She is also currently the president of the Davida Collective and a member of the Brazilian Anthropological Association’s Sex and Gender Issues Board. She has published several articles in Brazilian, American, and European academic journals regarding prostitution, race and the trafficking of women. During the World Cup, her book Pelé and the Mutt Complex (EdUFF) won an award for being one the most relevant football-related academic theses of the last ten years in Brazil.

CONFERENCE

Global Urban Futures:
Inclusive Cities in Theory and Practice

Friday April 26, 2016
8:30am-4:00pm

Paul Roberson Campus Center 255-257
Rutgers University – Newark

A conference funded by Rutgers Centers for Global Advancement and International Affairs (GAIA), co-sponsored by Global Urban Studies @RU-N (Joint PhD Program in Urban Systems), Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolital Studies, Center for Migration and the Global City, and Chancellor’s Seed Grant Program.

Keynote Panel:
Cross-Institutional Partnerships to Build Inclusive Cities

Nancy Cantor, Chancellor, Rutgers University – Newark
Albert Fritz, Minister of Social Development, Western Cape Province, South Africa
Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University
Moderator: Shirley M. Collado, Executive Vice Chancellor, Rutgers University – Newark

The Arts in Urban Activism

Aimee Cox, Fordham University
Kimberly DaCosta Holton, Rutgers University – Newark
Tim Raphael, Rutgers University – Newark
Lillian Ribeiro, Montclair State University
Moderator: Ian Watson, Arts, Culture, Media, Rutgers University – Newark

Civic Engagement in Cities:
Participation, Politics, and NGOs

Sean Mitchell, Rutgers University – Newark
Marie-Jeanne Ndimbira, PAY-Namibia
Lester Spence, Johns Hopkins University
Celina Su, CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College
Moderator: Mara Sidney, Rutgers University – Newark

Education & Inequity:
A Comparative Perspective

Thea Abu El-Haj, Rutgers University – New Brunswick
Elise Boddie, Rutgers School of Law – Newark
Dana Burde, New York University
Reva Jaffe-Walter, Montclair State University
Moderator: Jamie Lew, Rutgers University – Newark