Columbia GSAPP Assistant Professor Leah Meisterlin was awarded a Junior Faculty Diversity Grant from Columbia University’s Office of the Provost. The Provost’s Grant Program for “Junior Faculty Who Contribute to the Diversity Goals of the University” provides awards to support new or ongoing research and scholarship, seed funding for innovative research for which external funding would be difficult to obtain, and curricular development projects. Her project, DISTANCED: Intersectionality and Gendered Experiences of American Urban Space, was awarded in the Fall 2016 grant cycle to fund new exploratory research through 2017.

Building on Meisterlin’s research on pluralism and political representation in spatial data methodologies, DISTANCED includes developing and testing data-driven techniques for describing, measuring, and visualizing differential experiences of urban daily life by gender. She hypothesizes new approaches and innovative metrics that leverage intersectional identities within communities as a strategic advantage, rather than a complication, for urban research. The mixed-methods project will include quantitative spatial analysis as well as qualitative field work and design research techniques to test the approach in five to six mid-sized American cities.

A Columbia GSAPP alumna with a dual degree in Architecture and Urban Planning, Meisterlin joined the School’s Urban Planning faculty in July 2016. She previously taught at Barnard College and at the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture and Design. Meisterlin was an Adjunct Associate Research Scholar at Columbia’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture and a Research Scientist at New York University’s Center for Latino Adolescent and Family Health.

Previous award recipients include Columbia GSAPP’s Patrice Derrington, Holliday Professor and Director of the Real Estate Development program (Spring 2016), Erica Avrami, James Marston Fitch Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation (Spring 2015), and Mario Gooden, Associate Professor of Professional Practice (February 2013). More information on the grant and its recipients can be found on the website of Columbia University’s Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Diversity and Inclusion.