Faculty

Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Environmental Psychology brings together faculty from diverse disciplines, including psychology, anthropology, architecture, and geography, to study the relationship of people and place. The faculty are accessible and work with students directly in seminars, through advising, and with ongoing research projects.

All Graduate Center faculty in Environmental Psychology hold their appointment in a Ph.D. program exclusively. That is, they have no duties in other masters or bachelors level programs. This is somewhat unusual. It is also true that our faculty has come from multiple disciplines to work together in this program. This is somewhat unusual. Further, our faculty see themselves in a variety of roles including scholar, researcher, professional practitioner, theoretician, and political activist. This is also somewhat unusual.

Caitlin Cahill

Caitlin Cahill, PhD is an Associate Professor of Urban Geography & Politics, Pratt Institute. Caitlin joined the Critical & Environmental Psychology faculty at the Graduate Center, CUNY in 2011, and is now an affiliate faculty member. A community-based urban studies & youth studies scholar, for over fifteen years Caitlin has conducted participatory action research projects with …

Rebio Diaz Cardona

Rebio Diaz Cardona is Associate Professor of Psychology at LaGuardia Community College and affiliate member of the doctoral program in Critical Social-Personality and Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center. His work explores the materiality and spatiality of writing in the urban environment, recasting written language as a form of spatial production, seen through the lens of …

Melissa Checker

Dr. Melissa Checker (PhD NYU, 2002) serves on the faculties of the PhD Program in Anthropology and Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is also the Hagedorn Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College. Her research focuses on the politics of urban sustainability, environmental racism, grassroots activism, and managed retreat. Her book, The Sustainability Myth: Environmental Gentrification …

Michelle Fine

Michelle Fine is a Distinguished Professor of Critical Psychology, Women’s Studies and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Founding faculty member, with Maria Elena Torre, of The Public Science Project, Fine is author of more than 15 books and over 100 articles. Current projects involve collaborations with domestic violence activists fighting for the release of …

Nicholas Freudenberg

Dr. Freudenberg is a Distinguished Professor of Public Health at Hunter College and the Graduate Center and is director of the CUNY Doctor of Public Health program. For more than 20 years, he has worked with community organizations, civic groups and government agencies to develop, implement and evaluate interventions to improve the health of disadvantaged …

Roger Hart

Development of theory and research on children’s relationship to the physical environment; application of research to the planning and design of children’s environments and to environmental education; more broadly concerned with developing theory, research and programs which foster the greater participation of young people in articulating their perspectives and concerns as a way of better …

Tarry Hum

Tarry Hum is Professor and Chair of Queens College’s Department of Urban Studies. Hum’s research areas include immigrant urbanism, transnational capital and real estate financialization, urban planning, and community economic development. Her first book, Making a Global Immigrant Neighborhood: Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, received a 2015 Honorable Mention for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning’s …

Tomo Imamichi

Tomoaki (Tomo) Imamichi received his PhD in Environmental Psychology from the CUNY Graduate Center. He is Associate Professor of Psychology at LaGuardia Community College teaching courses in General, Social, and Environmental Psychology. At LaGuardia Community College, he has organized college wide events commemorating the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nuclear disasters of Chernobyl …

Cindi Katz

Cindi Katz is Professor of Geography at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and on the faculties of Environmental Psychology, American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Earth and Environmental Sciences, where she is Executive Officer. Her work concerns social reproduction and the production of space, place and nature; managing insecurity in …

Setha Low

Setha Low received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. She started her career as an Assistant and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, City and Regional Planning, and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Low is currently DISTINGUISHED Professor of Environmental Psychology, Geography, Anthropology, and Women’s Studies, and Director of the Public Space Research …

Jeff Maskovsky

Jeff Maskovsky is an anthropologist whose research and writing focus on urban poverty, grassroots activism and political economic change in the United States. His recent publications include the co-edited volume, New Poverty Studies: The Ethnography of Power, Politics and Impoverished People in the United States (NYU Press 2001), a co-edited special issue of the journal …

Michael Menser

Michael Menser first started teaching at Brooklyn College as an adjunct in 1995, became full time in 2003, and was tenured in 2009. He recently served on the BC Sustainability Council and the Provost’s Task Force on City-Based Sustainability Education. He advises Students for Global Justice club and is president of the Participatory Budgeting Project. …

Jessica Gordon-Nembhard

JESSICA GORDON-NEMBHARD is Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development and Chair of in the Department of Africana Studies; and an affiliate faculty member in the Economics MA Program at John Jay College, of the City University of New York (CUNY) in New York City, USA. She is also Director of John Jay’s McNair …

Susan Opotow

Susan Opotow’s research focuses on injustice and investigates the socio-political/ psychological contexts in which the scope of justice — the extent of our justice concerns for others — widens or narrows. Dr. Opotow’s theoretical work on injustice is based on my empirical studies utilizing quantitative, qualitative, and historical methods to examine how, when, and why injustice directed …

Laxmi Ramasubramanian

Dr. Laxmi Ramasubramanian, Architect and City Planner. Laxmi is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Policy at Hunter College and Deputy Director at the Institute for Sustainable Cities at Hunter College. She holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in Architecture from the University of Madras, India, a master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts …

Susan Saegert

Susan Saegert is Professor of Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center where she has worked since receiving her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan. She was Director of the Center for Human Environments (CHE), served as the first director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the …

Brett Stoudt

Brett G. Stoudt, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department with a joint appointment in the Gender Studies Program at John Jay College of Criminal justice as well as the Psychology and Social Welfare Doctoral Programs at the Graduate Center. He has worked on numerous participatory action research projects with community groups, lawyers, and …

Celina Su

Celina Su is the Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in Urban Studies and a Professor of Political Science, Environmental Psychology, and Urban Education at the City University of New York. Her publications include Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx (Cornell University Press) and pieces in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, n+1, and elsewhere. Her work focuses on …

Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Affiliated)

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences, and American Studies, and the Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. she also serves on the Executive Committee of the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean. Co-founder of many grassroots organizations including the California Prison …

Wendy Luttrell (Affiliated)

Wendy Luttrell has recently been appointed Professor in the Ph.D. Program in Urban Education, and comes to the Graduate Center from the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she held the Nancy Pforzheimer Aronson Chair in Human Development and Education. She is a leading authority on how urban American schooling shapes and reinforces beliefs about …

David Chapin (Emeritus)

David Chapin, Architect, M.Arch., University of California Berkeley, Professor of Architecture in Psychology, Ph.D. Program in Environmental Psychology, The Graduate Center, CUNY. e-mail My interests in environmental psychology stem from my own dissatisfaction with conventional architectural practice, especially after having the experience of knowing my niece (who was born brain-damaged) and realizing how little …

John Seley

John Seley’s research interests include planning, public policy, GIS, how urban policy is made and analyzed, and the theoretical, political, and societal frameworks for policy making and the tools which are employed to conduct policy analysis. 212.817.8723 jseley@gc.cuny.edu

Joan Greenbaum (Emerita)

Joan Greenbaum is professor emerita at City University of New York. Greenbaum is active in her union, the Professional Staff Congress (AFT Local 2334) where she serves as co-coordinator of Environmental Health and Safety. Greenbaum has a doctorate in political economy and has worked in IT design, implementation and teaching for over 40 years. She …

William Kornblum (Emeritus)

William Kornblum is a professor emeritus of sociology at the City University of New York. He is a graduate of Cornell University and the University of Chicago and was among the nation’s first Peace Corps volunteers. He is the author of numerous scholarly books and articles on the people of New York. A native New …

Leanne Rivlin (Emerita)

Leanne Rivlin was an original founder of the Environmental Psychology Doctoral Program at the CUNY Graduate Center in the late 1960s. Her research interests include the psychological impact of becoming homeless, life of public spaces, everyday practices of community making; research ethics and to address the practical, political, and ethical concerns raised by environmental social science …

Gary Winkel (Emeritus)

Gary Winkel is a Professor of Environmental Psychology at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York He received his Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Washington with a minor in quantitative methods. After receiving his degree, he served as an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Washington and was involved in research on museum and exhibit design as well as a project concerned …