Alumni

Below is a small sample of alumni of the Environmental Psychology program. Many of our alumni hold professional academic positions in universities worldwide, especially in architecture, geography, sociology, and psychology departments. Many alumni also work in policy-affecting and executive positions in national and local governments, health facilities, and international non-governmental organizations. They also run design and consulting firms and have consulting positions within larger organizations and design firms.

To all alumni: We are always interested in hearing from you about your life and work, and adding more information about your current projects to our database. Please send your current information including place of employment, contact information, publications, research interests, etc. to Chris Hoffman (choffman@gm.slc.edu).

Sruthi Atmakur-Javdekar

Sruthi Atmakur–Javdekar is a research associate at the Children’s Environments Research Group (CERG) and a PhD candidate in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Sruthi holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture, a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture, and is pursuing her Doctoral studies in the Environmental Psychology program at the …

Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani

Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani is the author of Contested City: Art and Public History as Mediation at New York’s Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (University of Iowa, 2019). An urbanist, artist, curator, and teacher practicing new modes of public arts and urbanism for community engagement, she has 20 years of experience working to understand people’s relationship to …

Amy Beth

Amy Beth holds academic library leadership positions. She joined CUNY’s Guttman Community College in 2015 as the Chief Librarian. Previously Dean of Libraries for both public and private higher education institutions, she has published on a variety of library challenges and on topics pertaining to women’s midlife development. Dr. Beth has worked on many projects …

Todd Levon Brown

Todd Brown is a graduate of Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Overall, his empirically focused psychosocial research lies at the intersection of race, space and place with a desired outcome of increased environmental justice and social equity in architecture, urban design and planning. His dissertation research explores the sensory cues that generate spatial …

Shelley Buchbinder

Shelley Buchbinder, PhD, MSW is an Education Training Specialist for the Community Support Services @ Rutgers Initiative at the Rutgers School of Health Professions. Dr. Buchbinder also teaches as a part-time lecturer at Rutgers School of Social Work. In 2019, she earned her doctorate in Environmental Psychology from the City University of New York. Until …

Claire Cahen

Claire has a PhD in Environmental Psychology. Her research interests center on austerity and urban disinvestment, public sector labor movement decline and revitalization, and efforts to institute community control of public institutions such as social housing and schools. Her dissertation examines how parents, students, and teachers negotiate cuts to public education in Newark. More broadly, …

Jungja Park Cardoso

  JungJa is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of São Paulo in Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil. At the Socio-Environmental Psychology and Educational Practices Laboratory (Laboratório de Psicologia Socioambiental e Práticas Educativas), she is conducting her post-doctoral research titled “Autistic subjectivity and the production of food space: The voices of Brazilian adults on the autism …

Chihsin Chiu

Chihsin Chiu is an Associate Professor of Graduate Institute of Building and Planning in National Taiwan University, Taiwan. His research situates Urban Political Ecology in the built environment studies by tackling a set of interrelated subjects, including housing programming, informal buildings, green architecture, and solar energy initiatives to engage in timely debates on justice, development and prospects in regard to …

Isabel Cuervo

Dr. Isabel Cuervo is a Senior Research Associate at the Barry Commoner Center for Health and the Environment at Queens College, City University of New York. She co-leads bilingual (Spanish), inter-institutional community-engaged research, evaluation, and service projects focused on Latinx immigrant and other precarious workers’ health. Isabel is a qualitative methodologies specialist in a transdisciplinary …

Gregory T. Donovan

Gregory is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies as well as an affiliate faculty member of the New Media and Digital Design Program and the Urban Law Center at Fordham University. His research broadly explores the mutual shaping of people, place, and proprietary media, and how to reorient such shaping toward …

Jason Douglas

  Dr. Jason A. Douglas is an assistant professor of public health in the Department of Health Sciences within Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences. Leveraging community-based participatory research frameworks, Douglas works with community-based organizations and residents in underserved Black and Latinx communities to investigate social and environmental determinants of public health disparities. His …

Deshonay Dozier

Deshonay Dozier’s research is concerned with working and surplus populations alternative relations to policing, property, and land. Dozier’s dissertation research maps a blues geography by investigating alternative development and cultural forms of social critique against dominant and elite development in Downtown and South Los Angeles.  Her work with the Housing Environments Research Group evaluates alternative …

Bryce DuBois

Bryce DuBois is a graduate of the Environmental Psychology program at the Graduate Center. His dissertation research is on dune stewardship practices and related social discourses in Rockaway Beach following Hurricane Sandy. The goal of this work is to push the management of beaches, and public parks more generally, towards a democratic and justice oriented approach. …

Valkiria Duran-Narucki

Originally from Costa Rica, Valkiria Durán-Narucki is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology of the College of Staten Island, CUNY. She came to the United States thanks to a Fulbright Scholarship from the US Department of State. She obtained a master’s degree from New York University with an emphasis in Community Psychology, and a …

Efrat Eizenberg

Efrat Eizenberg is an environmental psychologist and an associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, The Technion, Israel. She is the head of Urbanites – Human Habitat (Re)Development Research Group. She completed her PhD in the Department of Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in …

Desiree Fields

After graduating in 2013, Desiree Fields held a one-year Visiting Assistant Professor position in the department of urban studies at Queens College, where she taught courses in urban poverty and affluence, community organizing, and the future of New York City. While at Queens College Desiree became a research ally for the Right to the City …

Karen A. Franck

Karen A. Franck received her PhD in Environmental Psychology in 1979. After working on research projects with architect and planner Oscar Newman, she joined the architecture faculty at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). Currently a professor there, she directs the PhD Program in Urban Systems sponsored by NJIT and Rutgers-Newark. Her academic appointment …

Jen Jack Gieseking

I am Jen Jack Gieseking, an urban and digital cultural geographer, and environmental psychologist. I am engaged in research on how co-productions of space and identity in digital and material environments support and/or inhibit social, spatial, and economic justice. I am Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Kentucky, where I teach courses on digital, feminist, and queer …

Chris Hoffman

Christopher LoBosco Hoffman is an environmental and critical social psychologist specializing in community-based and participatory research. He is the first to complete a dual doctorate in environmental psychology and critical social and personality psychology at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York.  Hoffman studies ways to empower communities by …

Laurie Hurson

Laurie received her PhD  from the CUNY Graduate Center’s Environmental Psychology program.  Her research and work weaves together ecological approaches to learning, digital/physical space, pedagogy, and critical university studies. Laurie’s dissertation explores students’ learning ecologies and how these resource networks shape student learning and engagement. Laurie also completed her Masters thesis at the Graduate Center, …

Toby Israel

Toby Israel, Ph.D. is a former associate professor of architecture and psychology at the University of Lincoln (U.K.). Toby has worked as an environmental consultant in the USA and UK. She served as head of design research for LRK Architects and director of the Visual Arts Program for the New Jersey State Council on the …

Hannah Jaicks

Hannah Jaicks is an interdisciplinary scientist working with rural communities on how to coexist with native wildlife to improve the stability of wild and working landscapes for human and nonhuman animals. She is currently the Program Director for a regional nonprofit in the Northern Rockies based out of Bozeman, Montana. She received her PhD in …

Bijan Kimiagar

Bijan’s research concerns young people’s engagement in resolving global social and environmental injustices. Currently, he is the Principal at AEQUA Strategies, a consulting firm providing analytic expertise and technical assistance to mission-driven organizations. Previously, he served as the Associate Executive Director for Research at the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York where where he …

Javier Otero Peña

Javier Otero Peña obtained his PhD in Environmental Psychology in 2024. He currently is a research associate at the Center for Systems and Community Design of the CUNY School of Public Health, and a consultant for environmental sustainability projects. Javier’s dissertation is titled “Park use, urban environmental justice, and place attachment in parks in low-income …

Stephan Klein

Dr. Stephan Marc Klein is Professor Emeritus at Pratt Institute in Interior Design and Director of the Exhibit Design Program. He holds a doctorate in Environmental Psychology from the CUNY Graduate Center (1991) and studied architecture at Cornell University. Publications include: Klein, S., Otis, J., & Pratt Institute. (2002). Concepts for a memorial museum: An overview …

Elizabeth A. Kócs

Elizabeth A. Kócs Dr. Elizabeth A. Kócs is an environment-behavior scientist at the intersection of social, economic, policy, and technological advances in energy, sustainability and urban resilience. At the UIC Energy Initiative, she has a strong focus on energy and technology for transportation, the electrical grid and smart cities. She brings years of expertise in …

Do Jun Lee

Do Jun Lee is an Assistant Professor at Queens College CUNY in the Urban Studies Department. Do completed his Ph.D. and dissertation “Delivering Justice: Food Delivery Cyclists in New York City” in Environmental Psychology in 2018. His research interests include critically examining the interconnections of people, mobility, environment, and social justice. His professional career includes …

Pengfei Li

Pengfei holds a M.Phil and wraps up his PHD in Environmental Psychology from the City University of New York. He has been teaching psychology at New York City College of Technology since 2011. From June 2014 to August 2015, Pengfei conducted his field work in Beijing and taught classes “The History of Cities” and “Urban …

Kimberly Libman

Dr. Kimberly Libman joined the New York Academy of Medicine’s Division of Health Policy in May 2014. In this role she conducts research on obesity, chronic disease prevention, and the community development potential of implementing the Affordable Care Act. She also co-facilitates a statewide food policy work group and serve on the Farm to Institution …

Erin Elizabeth Lilli

Erin’s doctoral dissertation examines race and place, everyday resistance to neoliberalism, and the struggle for housing through a historical-materialist framework by using residential oral histories and archival data in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.  This work, in part, seeks to situate gentrification processes as an ongoing form of racial capitalism. In addition to her doctoral research, Erin has taught in …

Eleanor Luken

Eleanor holds a Master of Science in Architecture from University of Cincinnati where she studied the cultural geographies of children’s play space. She served as the Research Coordinator for Cincinnati’s laboratory and Head Start preschool, Project Manager for the Cincinnati Playscapes Initiative, and a grant writer and Project Manager for a multi-year National Science Foundation …

Lynne Manzo

Lynne Manzo Associate Professor has taught in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington, Seattle since 2001. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the UW School of Social Work. She received her PhD in Environmental Psychology from the CUNY Graduate Center in 1993. Dr. Manzo’s work focuses on place attachment, …

Lorraine E. Maxwell

Lorraine E. Maxwell, Ph.D. is an environmental psychologist and associate professor emerita in the department of Design and Environmental Analysis. Her research focuses on the role of the physical environment in children’s and adolescents’ cognitive development, well-being, self-identity and behavior. Her research looks closely at the physical environment of schools and early childhood facilities and …

Jennifer M. Pipitone

Jennifer M. Pipitone earned her doctorate in environmental psychology.  Her research explores the human-environment relationship within the broader contexts of learning, growth, and experience. Jennifer’s work challenges displaced and disembodied views of the human-environment relationship by considering the interaction between physical, psychological, and sociocultural contexts of being and knowing. Jennifer completed 7 weeks of grant-funded …

Gregg G. Van Ryzin

Gregg G. Van Ryzin, PhD, is a full professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, where he also serves as director of the PhD program in public administration. He has interests in both survey research and experimental methods and conducts empirical studies on a range of topics, including …

Jarrod Shanahan

Jarrod Shanahan is an author, essayist, and activist-scholar. Jarrod studies the social history of policing, courts, and jails in New York City, with an emphasis on Rikers Island. His dissertation, forthcoming in 2019, examines the New York City Department of Correction from 1954 to 1998, as a case study in the limitations of progressive penology. Jarrod …

Sharon E. Sutton

Dr. Sharon E. Sutton, FAIA is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Adjunct Professor of Social Work, and Director of CEEDS (Center for Environment, Education, and Design Studies) at the University of Washington. She has been an architecture educator since 1975, having held positions at Pratt Institute, Columbia University, the University of Cincinnati, and the …

Jen Tang

Jennifer Tang earned a Ph.D. in the Environmental Psychology program, working on issues related to the promotion of children’s participation and participatory democracy. She holds a Master’s Degree in Human Security and Peacebuilding from Royal Roads University in Canada. Currently, her work is focused on children’s participation in community and municipal level governance. She has …

Linnaea Tillett

Dr. Linnaea Tillett is principal of Tillett Lighting Design Associates, which she founded in 1983. A lighting designer with a doctorate in environmental psychology, she has extensive experience in public landscape. Combining design and social science, Dr. Tillett crafts highly nuanced lighting programs that delight, improve sustainability, and engage issues of safety and security. Her …

Tellisia Williams

Tellisia Williams, PhD currently serves as the Senior Researcher of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion at Girl Scouts of the USA. Tellisia is an experienced social science researcher, research & evaluation consultant, and an educator specializing in race. She uses an anti-racist lens to analyze statistical data, structural racism, power dynamics, and group relations. In this capacity, …

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