2018 Graduate Certificate Recipients

Find out more about the Graduate Certificate here.

 

Sophia Arbara

Master of Urban Design
Global Urban Humanities Initiative courses taken:
Borderwall Urban (core studio)
Advanced Study in Substantive Sociological Fields, Sociology 280
Citizen Involvement in the City Planning Methods and Models for Inclusive Planning and Design, LDARCH C424


Sophia Arbara is a MUD Graduate student at UC Berkeley and holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. Before coming to Berkeley, Sophia had the opportunity to work as a Research Fellow in the School of Urban Design and Architecture at the University of Florianopolis, Brazil, working with marginalized communities in informal settlements. Later on, she worked as an intern in the Madrid-based urban design firm, Ecosistema Urbano, in Spain, focusing on the design of public spaces and the development of participatory processes in design. Her previous academic projects examine issues of boundaries, spatial segregation,  interdisciplinary thinking and the intersections among built and natural environment. Currently, through the case of Athens, she is investigating the spatial implications of receiving forcibly displaced populations in cities and examine ways in which design can build towards more inclusive environments.

 

Katherine Bruhn

PhD South and Southeast Asian Studies
2019 Global Urban Humanities - Townsend Fellow

Global Urban Humanities Initiative courses taken:
The City, Arts, and Public Space (core seminar)
Art + Village + City in the Pearl River Delta (core studio)
Special Topics in Fields of Art History, History of Art 290

Katherine Bruhn is a PhD Candidate in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies. Her research focuses on the history of Indonesian modern and contemporary art, examined through the lens of a specific ethnic group, the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, as a means to articulate how local, transnational, and global networks have contributed to the production of creative ecosystems, from the early 20th century until now. Katherine’s research stems from a long engagement with artists in the Southeast Asian region, Indonesia specifically. Alongside research she has curated a number of exhibitions in Indonesia and Singapore. Since starting her PhD at Cal, the Global Urban Humanities has acted as an important forum through which to engage with students working across disciplines, contributing significantly to the conceptualization of her current research that seeks to articulate the utility of looking beyond more familiar units of analysis like the city in order to understand, more comprehensively, how artistic production contributes to economic growth and urban development globally.

 


Scott Chilberg

Master of City Planning
Global Urban Humanities Initiative courses taken:
The City, Arts and Public Space (core seminar)
Community Development Studio/Workshop, City Planning 268
Special Topics in Architecture Design Theory and Criticism, Architecture 239

 

Scott Chilberg (they/them) recently completed a Master’s in City Planning at UC Berkeley, where they focused their work and research on the interactions between queer and trans* culture creation in the Bay Area and the speculative real estate market and the broad spectrum of institutional (state and non-state) anti-displacement efforts. Scott’s master’s thesis looks at the formation of the Compton’s Transgender Cultural District in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, within the context of the growing popularity of cultural districts in cities more broadly as well as the particularities of trans* social and political networks that converge on the Tenderloin. They also work for a QTPOC-led non-profit in the TL that is working at the intersections of housing, economic justice, and the legal system to end incarceration of trans* folks and the prison industrial complex at large.

 

Annie Danis

PhD Anthropology
Global Urban Humanities Initiative courses taken:
Placemaking and Public Space (core seminar)
Sensing Cityscapes (core studio)
Special Topics in Cultural Geography: Cultural Landscape Methods, GEO 251

Annie Danis is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Anthropology, at University of California, Berkeley. Her work explores the intersection of art and archaeology through a sensory approach to historic landscapes. She explores how archaeology can use new and alternative forms of mediation to engage contemporary communities, and how art can use an archaeological sensibility to deepen our understandings of the materiality of history and place. She grew up driving around Los Angeles, CA and the long flat roads of the northwest and southwest.

 

Lyndsey Ogle

PhD Performance Studies
Global Urban Humanities Initiative courses taken:
The City, Arts and Public Space (core seminar)
Sensing Cityscapes (core studio)
Dispossession, Dissent and Design: Spatial Politics and the Global City, ARCH 239

 

 

Will Payne

PhD Geography
2019 Global Urban Humanities - Townsend Fellow

Global Urban Humanities Initiative courses taken:
Sensing Cityscapes: Sensors, Cities, Policies/Basic Protocols for New Media (core studio)
Urban Theory, City Planning 290
Group Studies, City Planning 298/Geography 254


Will Payne is a PhD Candidate in Geography, currently researching the impact of crowdsourced location-based services (both contemporary digital technologies like Yelp, Google Local, Foursquare, and TripAdvisor, and their analog predecessors like the Zagat Survey) on the way that people experience cities, with a focus on the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, where many of these technologies have been developed and used intensively since the 1980s. Will studies how these services aggregate, shape, and commodify "local knowledge" by harnessing free labor, in tandem with the transformation of urban neighborhoods and housing markets across the Global North. Will is a member of the Designated Emphasis program of the Berkeley Center for New Media, and also co-chairs the New Media Working Group through the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

 

Ettore Santi

PhD Architecture
Global Urban Humanities Initiative courses taken:
The City, Arts, and Public Space (core seminar)
Art + Village + City in the Pearl River Delta (core studio)
Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology 250

 

Tonika Sealy-Thompson

MA Performance Studies
Global Urban Humanities Initiative courses taken: 
Populism, Art and the City
The Museum and the City: Reimagining the Oakland Museum of California and its Neighborhoods
O que e um pobre? Competing Answers from Literature, Social Sciences, and Film, PORT 275

 

 


Robert Ungar

Master of Urban Design
Global Urban Humanities Initiative courses taken:
Borderwall Urban (core studio)
Advanced Study in Substantive Sociological Fields, Sociology 280
Citizen Involvement in the City Planning Methods and Models for Inclusive Planning and Design, LDARCH C424


Robert Ungar is an architect, artist, activist, designer, project manager, teacher, gardener, producer, all of the above and none of them really. He is an independent urban designer who graduated from Bezalel academy in Jerusalem, Israel. He co-founded ONYA Collective, bringing together 15 designers, architects and social activists developing ecological urban interventions that strengthen community involvement and environmental justice within complex urban situations. As a designer, he focuses on collaborative design processes for re-claiming places and putting them to use according to local needs. Robert’s main project in the past years is navigating the grassroot transformation of an abandoned entrance to Tel-Aviv's massive and polluted central bus station, to a green, lively and inclusive community gathering place for underserved communities of Israelis, refugees and migrants.

 

Find out more about the Graduate Certificate here.