Erin Lilli

Erin Lilli

Bio:
 
I received my doctorate in Environmental Psychology from The Graduate Center, CUNY in 2024. My dissertation research focused on Black Geographies of gentrification and the material conditions, contradictions, and experiences of gentrification had by long-term Black residents and homeowners in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. As an educator and researcher concerned with issues of urban life and social justice, I hold multiple and interconnected interests including the study of political economy and Marxian frameworks, social housing and financialization, policing and prison abolition, constructs of race and gender, and place identity and attachment. I have a co-authored article on community land trusts published in Housing Studies.
 
Since 2016, I have taught entry level courses and a graduate seminar in the Urban Studies Department here at Queens College where, in 2023, I received the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in the School of Social Science. Additionally, I taught at Pratt’s Urban Placemaking and Management program where I also advised thesis students. As a PhD student at CUNY, I was a member of the Public Space Research Group through which I obtained a Fellowship from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Center for the Future of Places to help develop a database of literature on public space. My earlier education was in design where I received a Master of Architecture and Master of Science in Architecture (Sustainable Design) from the University of Minnesota. During my time in Minneapolis, I routinely volunteered doing design work for community and housing advocacy organizations.
 
Currently, I am developing articles based on my dissertation and am interested in further researching two, as of yet, underdeveloped aspects of this work: 1) the historical role of familial and fictive kin networks in acquiring housing in urban communities of color and 2) intra-racial and classed differences in approaches to what constitute resistance to gentrification in communities of color. In other words, understanding the tensions that exist at the intersection of anti-capitalist approaches to housing, which decenter private property rights, and homeownership as a (the) strategy to build generational wealth.
Office: Powdermaker 250S
Pronouns: she/her