Race, Gender and the Built Environment Initiative

Active between 2016 and 2023: A unique history of racial oppression and segregation, as well as cultural norms regarding gender roles, have shaped the built and social environments of American cities and continue to affect their design and development. Urban marginality coupled with racial and gendered social structures persists throughout the Americas, raising questions about the continuing complicity of the planning and design fields in the production of inequitable urban environments.

In 2016, the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin established an initiative to strengthen our teaching and research on the relationship between race and/or gender and the built environment. As part of our efforts to build a transformative approach to issues of race, gender, and social equity within our disciplines, the school first established a rotating Fellow position, followed by a tenure-track faculty member hired in 2018, and a senior faculty member hired in 2022. Each member's work focuses on historically marginalized communities who have been underrepresented in design and planning research, including Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and LGBTQ populations, to fulfill a central role in shaping critical scholarship and design praxis both within the School of Architecture and beyond.

A key element of the school's Race and Gender in the Built Environment Initiative is the Emerging Scholar Fellowship position. The purpose of this endowed fellowship is to support the development of future scholars whose work centers on the relationships and intersections between race, gender, and the built environment in the fields represented within the UT School of Architecture.

2021-2023: Todd Levon Brown
2019-2021: Adam Miller
2018-2019: Sara Zwede
2017-2018: Edna Ledesma
2016-2017: Anna Livia Brand and Andrea Roberts