Meet the scholars behind the Urban Humanities Initiative
Tyler DeMassa is a first-year student in the Master of Architecture program at UCLA and holds a B.S. in Architecture degree from Washington University in St. Louis. Through the Urban Humanities program’s cross-disciplinary involvement and research, he hopes to gain new perspectives of the spatial and humanist contexts of the diverse Angeleno communities and to study how various forces, from commercialization to immigration, have influenced the city’s development.
Tyler DeMassa
Daniel is a Second Year in the Master of Architecture I program. Previously, he received a Bachelor of Art in Architecture and another in Spanish Language and Cultures from the University of San Diego. His research and interests focus on Mexican Architecture and the San Diego and Tijuana Border region. He is grateful that UHI is a place where he can continue developing his research and interests.
Daniel Rodríguez Mora
Brittany is a 1st year Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning student at the Luskin School of Public Affairs. Brittany has had the opportunity to work in various organizations and places like LISC LA, Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, L.A.A.N.E., and AARP, where she has learned how economic initiatives and access to transportation create livable communities. A recent graduate of UCLA with a Bachelor's in History and Labor Studies, Brittany is interested in researching the relation of mobility barriers to employment and its ramifications towards community development.
Brittany Montano
Megan Riley (she/they) is a doctoral student in UCLA’s Department of Information Studies focusing on the political economy of libraries, particularly labor and policing. They moved to LA from Oakland in 2018 to attend UCLA’s MLIS program, from which they graduated in 2020 with a focus on precarious labor issues in LIS, special collections and archives. Megan’s other research interests include police, policing, and carceral spaces and practices in libraries and archives; and critical infrastructure studies. They are an active member of the Abolitionist Library Association. Her personal hobbies and interests include crosswords, basketball, surfing, and her cat Flora.
Megan Riley
Rebecca Smith is a second year in the Comparative Literature doctoral program at UCLA where she focuses on early modern and modern(ist) texts in Spanish, French, and Nahuatl. Born in Portland, Oregon, Rebecca received her bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Sarah Lawrence College after studying literature and public policy at the Stockholm School of Economics and Pompeu Fabra University. Before moving to LA for graduate school, Rebecca studied Latin American literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Currently, her work focuses on the intersection of the public-private in post-revolutionary Mexico.
Rebecca Smith
Krystle Yu is a first-year student in the UCLA MURP Program pursuing a design and development concentration. In her work, she currently supports the Koreatown Youth and Community Center in piloting a community-led urban greening program called the Tree Ambassadors and facilitates active transportation outreach and education efforts in Pasadena. Under the Luskin Center for Innovation, she is also conducting archival and policy research into the heat history of Watts to explore how histories have shaped the city's current experience with the urban heat island effect. Her interests lie at the intersection of decolonization/anti-imperialism, environmental justice, and racial justice.
Krystle Yu
Shona is an urban environmental scientist and storyteller. She studies the human environment nexus, focusing on how nature based solutions can be employed to solve crises of sustainability and inequality. She is currently pursuing a Master’s of Urban and Regional Planning degree. Shona has previously worked on climate action in local government, particularly with regards to solid waste and stormwater management.
Shona Paterson
Corinne is a first year MURP student at UCLA Luskin. As an undergrad at the University of Virginia, she majored in International Relations and Spanish. After graduation she taught high school in Memphis, where experiences with her students led her to want to work with communities to improve educational and health outcomes, transportation, food security, environmental awareness, and nature access through the lens of planning. Professionally, she has participated in planning efforts from Maryland to Texas - with a focus on research and engagement. At UCLA, she looks forward to learning about the history of the City of Los Angeles and understanding the role of design in the field.
Corinne Odom
Olivia Arena is a first year Master of Urban and Regional Planning student. Originally from Houston, Texas, Olivia experienced the vibrancy and chaos of a sprawling, diverse, car-centric, humid city. After studying urban studies at the University of Texas at Austin, she grew interested in comparative urban research, specifically looking at place-based interventions to address social and economic injustices. Olivia worked in policy research and affordable housing advocacy at the national level before returning to school to study local urban interventions. She is interested in public space, social imaginaries, equitable development, community-driven planning and design, and housing justice.
Olivia Arena
Rocio (she/they) is a PhD student in the Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies. Her research focuses on prison abolition, environmental justice, and social movements. They grew up in the San Fernando Valley and got their undergraduate degrees in Chicana/o Studies and Sociology from CSUN.
Rocio Rivera-Murillo
Danielle Hanzalik is a 3rd year Ph.D. student in the French and Francophone Studies section of the European Languages and Transcultural Studies (ELTS) department. Working across mediums (literature, film, and art), her research focuses on modern and contemporary representations of urban space, specifically those concerning Paris. She is interested in how individuals and communities move through urban space, as well as how urban environments serve as contact zones between body and memory. Her love of cities was born when she moved to Berkeley for her undergraduate studies, and it was joyously confirmed during her time living in Paris
Danielle Hanzalik
Amanda Gormsen is a first year Master of Urban and Regional Planning and Latin American Studies dual degree student at UCLA. Prior to UCLA, she completed her undergraduate degree at William & Mary with a double major in Environmental Policy and Finance. Professionally, Amanda worked for 3 years in federal consulting on projects at the Department of Treasury, Department of Agriculture, and Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C. Academically, Amanda is interested in climate change mitigation and adaptation, environmental justice, and urban planning in Latin America.
Amanda Gormsen
Emma Tran is a 2nd-year PhD student in the Community Health Sciences department at Fielding School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the cyclical relationships between racialized geographies and health inequities. She is very excited to join UHI and to learn how to leverage the sociopolitical power of public health for spatial justice.
Emma Tran
Garo Susmanyan is a first year Master of Architecture student (M.Arch I Program) at UCLA AUD. Garo graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture with High Honours in London, UK, where he concentrated his studies in the field of organic and environmental architecture. Garo spent his 20s in London and across Europe, before moving to Los Angeles in late 2021. He explored architecture through travelling across historically and culturally rich places that in his eyes were imperilled. Garo strongly believes pedestrianisation of larger cities/communities is the key to cultural preservation and ethically/economically healthy society. His views are defined by the simple question: “We are part of nature itself, then why put so much effort in distancing ourselves from it?”.
Garo Susmanyan
Doğa is a third year Linguistic Anthropology PhD student. Her research focuses on how discourses about public parks produce, reinforce, and disrupt ideologies about human-nature relationships and land use; the erasure of the Indigenous histories of national and state parks; and the processes through which these natural areas become privatized, racialized, and classed. She received her B.S. from Cornell University where she studied Anthropology, Education, and Mycology. Doğa is an active member of mycology communities who organize events focusing on the intersections of fungi and justice. She also produces fungi-inspired music under the artist name “wood ear.”
Doğa Tekin
Katie is a first year M.Arch I student at UCLA's Department of Architecture and Urban Design. She was born in Los Angeles and moved to New York City to study architecture at Barnard College. Having worked in construction, she is passionate about sustainable materials and architecture's role in exploitive labor. Katie worked at the Architect's Newspaper and continues to contribute to print and digital publications such as Architectural Digest and NYRA. After competing nationally and internationally for 15 years, she teaches the sport of fencing and enjoys biking in her free time.
Katie Angen
Kevin W. Cruz Amaya is a PhD Student in the department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies. He is a visual artist focused primarily on printmaking processes. His research focuses on Chicana/o art produced alongside the development of the Chicano civil rights movement. He recently completed a master’s thesis on Chicanx art political graphics produced in the San Francisco Bay Area since the 19670s and their visual expression of third world solidarity with Central American communities. His dissertation research focuses on the work of Gilbert “Magu” Luján and his visualizations of alternative worlds.
Kevin Amaya
Adam is an urban planner, heritage conservationist, and graduate student in the Architecture PhD program at UCLA AUD. His research engages the intersection of critical heritage studies and migration studies, with applied research experience from projects based in Ethiopia, Finland, Spain, Haiti, Palestine, and Morocco. He is a graduate of the dual M.S. in Urban Planning and Historic Preservation program at Columbia University and has taught GIS coursework at Barnard College. He has also served as Jewish Heritage Program Fellow at World Monuments Fund and given tours of Grand Central Terminal for the Municipal Art Society of New York.
Adam Lubitz
Kevin is a first year Master of Urban Planning student at the Luskin School of Public Affairs. His concentration is in Design and Development. He received his Bachelor of Art in Asian American Studies from California State University Northridge. He previously taught in Mississippi through Teach For America and in Japan through the JET Program. He is concerned with the design of the built environment and its effect on student commutes to school. He is grateful to merge together the humanities and the arts through UHI. For fun, he enjoys bouldering, photography, and going to concerts.
Karl Pascasio
Shweta Sundar is a first year MURP student, hailing from Mumbai, India. Trained as an Architect in School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, she has four years of experience working in the field of post-disaster housing reconstruction, affordable housing, informal settlements and environmentally sustainable architecture designs, materials, and construction techniques. She is interested in understanding how the myriad lived-realities of communities can inform and shape architecture and planning of spaces that they inhabit, to make the processes people-centric and holistically sustainable.
Shweta Sundar
Houwei is a first-year M.Arch student at the Department of Architecture and Urbanism UCLA. He previously received his bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Liverpool. He is interested in the urban morphology, the relationship between humanity and nature in urban areas, and devoting himself to exploring the transformation and upgrading of the post-industrialized cities employing the design and management measurements. Through engaging in various social activities, Houwei was able to analyze his unique points of view and state the corresponding feasible resolutions to tackle different issues in a specific urban context.
Houwei Fu
Shane is a PhD student in the school of architecture, and joined the program following several years of journalism for the Architect's Newspaper and Archinect. He has also published essays in Log Journal, Plat, Clog, Mas Context, Manifest, Pidgin and Thresholds. Shane has a Masters of Arts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a Bachelor of Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).