Clara Irazabal

Clara Irazábal is the Director of the Urban Studies and Planning Program (URSP) in the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (MAPP) at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park. She previously was the Director of the Latinx and Latin American Studies Program and Professor of Planning in at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Irazábal also worked as Associate Professor and Director of the Latin Lab at Columbia University in the City of New York and Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California. She got her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and has two masters degrees, one from UCB and another from the Central University of Venezuela. In her research and teaching, she explores the interactions of culture, politics, and placemaking, and their impact on community development and socio-spatial justice in Latin American cities and US Latinx, immigrant, and minority communities.