Architect, Developer, Managing Director of MOMIDC

Architect and developer Russell Katz is the Managing Director of MOMIDC, a real estate firm focused on the design, development, ownership and management of environmentally conscious properties in the Washington, DC region.

Russell is driven by the belief that environmentally sustainable, beautifully designed projects can be financially successful.  He guides MOMIDC’s selective project choices and oversees the operation of the firm’s portfolio, which currently includes 350,000 square feet of multifamily residential, retail and office space, as well as 185 acres of conserved woodlands.

RKatz@momidc.com

Associate Dean for Academics, TuSA

Scott Bernhard is the Mintz Professor of Architecture at the Tulane School of Architecture in New Orleans where he has been a member of the faculty for more than 26 years. Scott has served as both Associate Dean and Interim Dean of the School and was Director of the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design (formerly Tulane City Center) from 2007 to 2012. He is the recipient of numerous teaching awards including the President’s Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Teaching the Inspirational Teacher Award and the Excellence in Teaching Award, University-wide honors bestowed by Tulane. He was the 1995 Tulane School of Architecture Professor of the Year, and won the Malcolm Heard Teaching Award in 2001, in 2007 and again in 2012. He is a licensed Architect and principal of a small, collaborative, research and design practice focused on building in the climate and context of New Orleans.

Studio Faculty, 2018-2023
Assistant Professor
University of Virginia

María González Aranguren is an architect and urban planner who graduated in Master degree in The Technical University of Architecture of Madrid (NAAB Substantial Equivalency Accreditation), with Honorable Mention in 2014. She obtained the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship in Technische Universität Berlin for one year and she received a Postgraduate Master in Advanced Architectural Projects to complement her knowledge in Architectural Theory. She spent a year teaching graduate students who were completing their Master Thesis Projects at The Technical University of Madrid as a “mentor” professor. In January 2018, María joined the faculty at University of Virginia’s School of Architecture in a lecturer position.

During this time, she has combined teaching with professional practice in the renowned office A&G (Aranguren & Gallegos architects), where she began working in 2010 in national and international projects, including the ICA New Contemporary Art Museum in Miami, the “Oak House” or the new Housing Towers of Valdebebas.

María González Aranguren’s research addresses the regeneration of degraded urban fabrics caused by social, climatic, or catastrophic factors. She has won numerous awards for her urban research on the rehabilitation of the Alfama district of Lisbon, including the 2018 AIA Unbuilt Washington Award of Excellence, the BSA Design Award, the SARA Award, the 2019 Global Future Design Award, Architecture Masterprize 2019, the 31st World Architecture Prize or Eurasian Prize among others. Her most recent research focuses on minimal domestic space where she investigates new ways of living in the 21st century. She explores the limits of domesticity, comparing housing types across different realms from college dormitories to nomadic units to prison cells.

Studio Faculty, 2018-2020
Research Assistant Professor
Tulane University

Monisha Nasa holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi and a Master of Architecture from the University of Virginia where she received awards for her graduate work including the World Architecture Award and a faculty award for design excellence. She has served as a research fellow with the Yamuna River Project, a pan-university project at the University of Virginia and Tulane University, which is collaborating with the municipal authorities of New Delhi in proposing design solutions to improve the socio-ecological urban conditions of the city.

Monisha is licensed to practice architecture in India, she has professional experience working at firms in the US (2018) and India (2013-2017). For four years she worked with vir.mueller Architects in New Delhi, where she was involved in several projects ranging from a 10,000 sqm museum on a world heritage site, large scale residential housing and urban developments, to private residences and offices.

She is interested in exploring the agency and power of Architecture in building communities and institutions that promote social equality, especially in the rapidly urbanizing parts of the world. In August 2019, she moved to New Orleans to join the Tulane School of Architecture as a Research Assistant Professor and collaborate with Dean Iñaki Alday on the continued research in Indian cities and Urbanism.

Former Studio Faculty, 2021
Research Assisstant Professor
Tulane University

Andrea is a Spanish architect who develops her PhD in Advanced Architectural Projects at the Polytechnic University of Madrid. Her research focuses on the impact of cultural hybrization on local architecture and spatial transformations. She holds a Master (2018) and a bachelor’s degree (2016) both in Architecture and carried out at the Polytechnic University of Madrid. During her studies, she spent one year abroad (2014-2015) at La Cambre Horta Faculty of Architecture, Université Libre de Bruxelles, in Belgium. There, she reinforced her interest in the connection between architecture and human sciences, taking multidisciplinary classes including anthropology of space. She also studied in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, United States, as a long-term Rotary Youth Exchange Student (2008-2009). She has worked abroad for office Atelier 4/5 Architecture, in Brussels, Belgium, and for CONI Association, in Coban, Guatemala, where she participated in the Rural School Prototype Project for maya-q’eqchi indigenous communities in Alta Verapaz.

Former Buckner W. Clay Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences

Ian Baucom came to the University of Virginia after serving 17 years in Duke University’s Department of English as a professor and as the director of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute. Since arriving at UVA in the summer of 2014, Dean Baucom has led a series of initiatives within the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

He is overseeing an ambitious hiring campaign that, in the midst of a generational turnover of esteemed faculty, aims to bring upwards of 200 new tenured and tenure-track faculty to the College. Baucom is emphasizing the importance of recruiting at the highest level of excellence and enhancing the faculty’s diversity to build on the College’s historical strengths and to ensure its future for generations of students to come.

Baucom is also guiding the College’s efforts to revise its undergraduate curriculum for the first time in four decades, starting with the new curriculum pilot that will launch in the 2017-18 academic year. In addition, he is working with the College’s leadership team to develop creative initiatives in global, digital and cross-disciplinary studies. At the same time, Baucom is working to advance the research mission and to further strengthen graduate programs, coordinating an examination of the Graduate School’s current state and future ambitions.

He earned his undergraduate degree in political science from Wake Forest University and holds a master’s degree in African studies and a doctorate in English, both from Yale University.

Baucom is the author of Out of Place: Englishness, Empire and the Locations of Identity, and Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History. He is the co-editor of Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain.

ibb4n@virginia.edu

University of Virginia School of Architecture

Berman received a bachelor of architecture with high distinction in 1983 from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where she graduated top in her class and received the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario Medal for Design. She went on to earn a Master of Design Studies degree in 1991, followed by her Doctor of Design in 1993 in architectural history, theory and criticism, both from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Berman is an architect and theorist whose research explores the relationships between contemporary culture and the manifold material and spatial practices in architecture, urbanism and landscape.

In addition to her teaching and administrative duties at Tulane, Berman founded and directed the URBANbuild program, a multi-scaled two-year program facilitated by a HUD grant to support the urban rehabilitation and revitalization of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She was also involved in multiple university-community partnerships that included her appointments on the Cityworks Board of the American Institute of Architects and the Mayor’s Bring New Orleans Back Commission. In addition, she developed a series of global travel programs for students, including one focused on water cities.

Berman has been the recipient of many honors and awards, including the President’s Award and Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching – the top teaching award given at Tulane.

ilb8r@virginia.edu

Associate Professor, Politics

John Echeverri-Gent’s books include The State and the Poor: Public Policy and Political Development in India and the United States (University of California Press, 1993) and Economic Reform in Three Giants: U.S. Foreign Policy and the USSR, China, and India (Transaction, 1990) which he co-edited. His published articles focus on the political economy of development and comparative public policy. His currently completing a manuscript entitled “Politics of Markets: Political Economy of India’s Financial Market Development in Comparative Perspective”. He serves as treasurer of the American Institute of Indian Studies and as a member of the editorial board of Political Science Quarterly.

He has chaired the American Political Science Task Force on “Difference and Inequality in Developing Societies.” He is the winner of the 1993 Theodore J. Lowi Award presented by the Policy Studies Organization for best article in the Policy Studies Journal. He has also served as MacArthur Scholar in residence at the Overseas Development Council, Senior Fellow at the American Institute of Indian Studies, and Fulbright Scholar.

jee8p@virginia.edu

Director, Institute of Humanities and Global Cities
Professor of English

Debjani Ganguly is Professor of English and the Director of the Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures (IHGC) at the University of Virginia. She works in the fields of world literature, postcolonial studies and South Asian Studies. Her research interests include the contemporary Anglophone novel, literary forms in the new media age, literature and human rights, caste and dalit studies, language worlds in colonial/postcolonial South Asia, and Indian Ocean literary worlds from 1750-1950. In recent years, Debjani has researched the links between globalism, information technology, ethnic violence and humanitarian connectivity through the genre of the novel, the result of which is a book with Duke UP entitled This Thing Called the World: The Contemporary Novel as Global Form (2016).

She is the author of Caste, Colonialism and Countermodernity (2005) and co-editor of Edward Said: The Legacy of a Public Intellectual (2007) and Rethinking Gandhi and Nonviolent Relationality: Global Perspectives (2007). She co-edits (with Ato Quayson and Neil Ten Kortenaar) The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry. Debjani has held visiting fellowships at the University of Chicago, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2015 she was on the seminar faculty of the Harvard Institute for World Literature. She is a Life Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge; Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland; and, Member on the International Advisory Boards of the Harvard Institute for World Literature, the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) at Duke University, and the Duke-Bologna-UVA School in Global Studies and Critical Theory.

Prior to her arrival at UVA, Debjani was Director of the Humanities Research Centre (2007-2014) and Associate Professor of Literature at the Australian National University, Canberra.

dg4vd@virginia.edu

Executive Vice President and Provost, UVa

As executive vice president and provost of the University of Virginia, Thomas C. Katsouleas oversees the University’s teaching and research activities. He directs the academic administration of the eleven schools, the library, art museums, public service activities, numerous University centers, and foreign study programs.

Provost Katsouleas served as dean of the Pratt School of Engineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University from 2008–2015. He earned a B.S. in 1979 and a Ph.D. in physics in 1984, both from UCLA. He joined the University of Southern California faculty as an associate professor of electrical engineering in 1991, becoming full professor in 1997. There he also served as an associate dean of engineering and vice provost of information technology services.

Provost Katsouleas is a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).  Mr. Katsouleas co-created the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenge Scholars Program in 2009, and organized and co-chaired the first NAE Grand Challenges national summit. He currently serves as co-chair of the Advisory Committee on The Grand Challenges, and highlighted several of the successes produced by the Challenges in his keynote address at the NAE annual meeting in 2015.

Provost Katsouleas is a recognized inventor and a leading scholar of plasma science, originating a number of concepts in plasma-based particle accelerators and light sources. His work has been highlighted on the covers of Physical Review Letters, the CERN Courier and Nature. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 publications and given more than 50 major invited talks.

tck6r@virginia.edu

Lead Principal Investigator, Virginia Coast Reserve LTER
Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences

Karen McGlathery is a Professor of Environmental Sciences.  She received her B.S. from Connecticut College and her Ph.D. from Cornell University.  Before coming to UVA in 1996, Karen was a Research Associate at the University of Copenhagen and the National Environmental Research Institute in Denmark.

Since 2004, McGlathery has served as Director of the Virginia Coast Reserve Long Term Ecological Research (VCR LTER) program, based at UVA’s Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.  She also is a member of the Science Council and Executive Board of the National LTER Program.  The VCR LTER program is one of 25 in the nation funded by the National Science Foundation to study long-term change in marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

A specialist on effects of environmental change, including climate, sea-level rise, eutrophication and species invasions in coastal marine ecosystems, McGlathery has co-authored over 80 articles in journals including Nature, Limnology and Oceanography, Marine Ecology Progress Series, and Oceanography.  Her most recent research at the VCR LTER focuses on the role of large-scale habitat restoration in the provision of ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration.  In addition to Virginia’s Eastern Shore, the graduate students in her lab have worked in coastal systems in New England, Florida, Bermuda, New Zealand and Mozambique.  She teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in Global Coastal Change, Aquatic and Estuarine Ecology, Coastal Oceanography, and Conservation.

kjm4k@virginia.edu

Vice Provost for Global Affairs

University of Virginia

Stephen D. Mull is Vice Provost for Global Affairs at the University of Virginia. In this role he is the primary lead on global relations at the University, responsible for developing a strategic vision, designing outreach, and overseeing international activities. Steve will oversee institutional development of global partnerships and develop a wide array of services, programs, experiences, and strategic partnerships that promote global imagination within the university community.

Mull has served in a broad range of U.S. national security positions, most recently as Acting Under Secretary for Political Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, working as the day-to-day manager of overall regional and bilateral policy issues, and overseeing the bureaus for Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Eurasia, the Near East, South and Central Asia, the Western Hemisphere, and International Organizations. He served as Lead Coordinator for Iran Nuclear Implementation from August 2015 until August 2017, in which capacity he led U.S. government interagency efforts and diplomacy to implement the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Mull was the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Poland from 2012 until 2015 and U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Lithuania from 2003 to 2006. He has been both Executive Secretary of the State Department and the Senior Advisor to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He has also recently served as Resident Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

Ambassador Mull is the recipient of the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award, two Presidential Meritorious Service Awards, two Distinguished Honor Awards, the Baker-Wilkins Award for Outstanding Deputy Chief of Mission, two Superior Honor Awards, and more than a dozen Senior Foreign Service performance awards.  He joined the Foreign Service in March 1982, and holds the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest rank in the U.S. Foreign Service.  He is a 1980 graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

sdm9rg@virginia.edu

Co-Director, YRP

Director of the Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation and Professor of History
University of Virginia

Brian Owensby is professor of history in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia. His scholarly work has ranged from social and political history in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Brazil to legal and imperial history in seventeenth-century Mexico. Current research includes historiography and historical theory from a Brazilian perspective and a book-length project on the Jesuit New World synthesis of the eighteenth century as a counterpoint to Eurocentric accounts of modernity. He has taught a variety of courses large and small to undergraduates, including a Global History class, and is supervising several graduate students. He served as chair of the Corcoran Department of History from 2009 to 2012.