New Faculty: Assistant Professor of Growth and Structure of Cities Lauren Hansen Restrepo
As we begin the semester, we're highlighting Bryn Mawr's newest faculty members. The College supports faculty excellence in both research and teaching.
Assistant Professor of Growth and Structure of Cities Lauren Hansen Restrepo
My current research centers on the relationship between urbanization and social change in Xinjiang, an ethnopolitically contested region in China’s far northwest. More generally, I study the process of urban planning in authoritarian states, as well as questions of development and security in deeply divided cities and the role that urban interventions can play in peacemaking (and peace breaking) in conflict and post-conflict regions. In addition to my perennial curiosity about the past and present of Chinese urban space, I am interested in the cities of Central Asia and Turkey.
The interdisciplinary Growth and Structure of Cities major challenges the student to understand the dynamic relationship of urban spatial organization and the built environment to politics, economics, cultures and societies.