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Faculty and Staff

Garth A. Myers is the director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies and the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Urban International Studies. Garth Myers earned a Ph.D. in Geography (1993) from UCLA with an allied field in Urban Planning. Myers has an M.A. (UCLA, 1986) in African Area Studies, with Geography and Urban Planning as the major and minor fields, and a B.A. with Honors in History from Bowdoin College, with concentrations in African and African-American History. He has taught at the University of Kansas, University of Nebraska-Omaha, Miami University (Ohio), California State University at Dominguez Hills, and UCLA. Myers is comfortable with large lecture classes and small seminars. His teaching philosophy rests on a belief in student engagement; the best learning takes place in engaged classrooms, where the professor facilitates student discussion and debate. Myers has conducted research in Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, South Africa, Finland, and the UK over the past 20 years, and he regularly uses his research to inform his teaching.
Contact: [email protected]
Xiangming Chen served as founding Dean and Director of Urban and Global Studies and Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies at Trinity College, Connecticut from 2007-2019. He is currently Interim Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies for the spring 2023 semester, Director of the Urban Studies Program, and the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Global Urban Studies and Sociology. He also holds the positions of Distinguished Guest Professor at in the School of Social Development and Policy at Fudan University in Shanghai and Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in Shanghai, China. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences. He has taught at Yale University, and received fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Sociological Association, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Exchange, the Open Society Institute, and the Regional Studies Association. He received his B.A. from Beijing Foreign Studies University and his Ph.D. in sociology from Duke University. He is a co-author, with Anthony Orum, of The World of Cities: Places in Comparative and Historical Perspective (Blackwell, 2003); the author of As Borders Bend: Transnational Spaces on the Pacific Rim (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005); the editor of and primary contributor to Shanghai Rising: State Power and Local Transformations in a Global Megacity (University of Minnesota Press, 2009); the lead editor, with Ahmed Kanna, of Rethinking Global Urbanism: Comparative Insights from Secondary Cities (Routledge, 2012); a co-author, with Anthony Orum and Krista Paulsen, of Introduction to Cities: How Place and Space Shape Human Experience (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, second edition, 2018); the lead editor, with Nick Bacon, of Confronting Urban Legacy: Rediscovering Hartford and New England’s Forgotten Cities (Lexington Books, 2013); and a co-editor, with Sharon Zukin and Philip Kasinitz, of Global Cities, Local Streets (Routledge, 2015; Chinese edition, 2016; Korean edition, 2017; and lead author, with Julie Tian Miao and Xue Li, The Belt and Road Initiative as Epochal Regionalization (Regional Studies Association, 2020).
View Dr. Chen’s extended bio and faculty profile.
Contact: [email protected]
Gabby Nelson is Associate Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies. Gabby manages events, research and engagement opportunities for students, and communications. She also supports CUGS visiting faculty and academic programs. Gabby received an M.A. in public policy and graduate certificate in urban planning from Trinity College and a B.A. in urban studies and minor in Spanish from the University of Connecticut. She conducted research on housing policy as a graduate student and wrote a master’s thesis titled “Community Development Corporations and Neighborhood Stability in Hartford and New Haven, CT.” An avid gardener, Gabby grows cut flowers, veggies, and herbs in Hartford in her spare time.
Contact: [email protected]
Laura Humm Delgado is Assistant Professor in Urban Studies. She is an urban planning scholar and former practitioner.  She received a Master in City Planning and a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and she previously worked for the City of Boston researching affordable housing, homeownership, land use, and abandoned properties.  Her research focuses on housing and community development, including the role of community-based organizations and public agencies, in U.S. cities.  Her most recent research looks at public libraries and how they draw on community resources to facilitate immigrant integration at the neighborhood level.  Previously, her research has addressed the foreclosure crisis, gentrification, and homelessness.  She has experience teaching housing and community development, research methods, urban planning history and theory, and GIS at MIT and Boston University.  As a teacher, she values discussion-based classes and encourages students to incorporate experiential learning into their coursework.
Contact: [email protected]

Sean Fitzpatrick is Professor of the Practice in Public Policy and Urban Studies. He is one of the core professors in the graduate certificate in urban planning.  Prior to joining the Trinity faculty, Professor Fitzpatrick was Director of Development Services for the City of Hartford under Mayor Luke Bronin, where he championed the revival of Constitution Plaza as a center of education and technological innovation.  He also led the successful completion of the prior mayoral administration’s troubled stadium project, Dunkin’ Donuts Park, and launched the initiative that brought a professional soccer franchise, Hartford Athletic, to a newly-renovated Dillon Stadium in 2019.  Fitzpatrick previously served as Chief of Staff to the Chairman of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, John Degnan, who was appointed to lead reform efforts at that agency in the wake of the 2013 Bridgegate scandal.  Before entering government service, he spent two decades in the insurance industry, helping to establish one of Metro Hartford’s most successful insurance start-ups, Executive Risk, in the 1990s and later holding senior executive positions with Chubb and The Hartford.  Fitzpatrick began his career in private law practice in Washington, DC, where he represented the federal deposit insurance agencies in trial and appellate litigation arising out of the savings and loan crisis. From 2002 through 2011, Fitzpatrick served as a Lecturer at the University of Connecticut School of Law, where he taught courses in professional liability and insurance law.  From 2010 through 2018, he was an Adviser on the American Law Institute’s inaugural Restatement of the Law of Liability Insurance (2019).
Contact: [email protected]
Keavy McFadden is the Kelter Postdoctoral Fellow in Urban Studies. She an urban geographer with specializations in urban development and infrastructure, education, social movements, and community-based research. While completing her PhD at University of Minnesota, Keavy studied the intersection between education and urban politics in Chicago. Politically engaged research is central to her ongoing research agenda, and the theoretical insights of her research are grounded in collaborative research engagements with community-based organizations. Keavy’s latest research project explores the entanglements between social reproduction and environmental justice. Keavy’s research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the National Science Foundation, the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change at University of Minnesota, and the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota. She is also the co-founder and co-editor of AGITATE! Journal, an online, open-access platform that explores the possibilities and challenges of interweaving scholarship, activism, and artistry in search of justice.
Shoshana Goldstein is Visiting Assistant Professor in Urban Studies. She is an academic and urban planner with a master’s in international affairs from the New School, where she focused on the comparative urban development experiences of India and China, and a PhD in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University, with specializations in international planning, South Asian History, and Landscape Architecture. Her research investigates histories of urban planning in India and North America, exploring themes of mobility justice, housing precarity, and placemaking among marginal and migrant communities. Prior to earning her doctorate, Goldstein worked for the India China Institute and as a consultant for the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and UNICEF. She has taught intro and advanced GIS for planners, courses on migration, infrastructure, and housing.

 

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Visiting Scholars

CUGS has been honored to host visiting scholars from around the nation and around the world since its founding in 2008. Learn more about the CUGS visiting scholar programs.