Program Update: Urban Studies

Five people sit at a black conference table in a gray room.
UWM Urban Studies faculty sat on the research panel, "The Milwaukee Urban Research Model: Grassroots Approaches to Conflict and Resilience," at the International Conference of Urban Affairs. Left to right: Lynne Woehrle (assoc. prof. nursing); Kirk Harris (assoc. prof. urban planning), Jamie Harris (teaching assoc. prof. urban studies), Lillian Schoen (urban studies major), and Arijit Sen (assoc. prof. history).

Urban Studies program’s 28th Annual Student Research Forum showcases student research, recent alumni accomplishments, and an urban historian and 2026- Pulitzer Book Award finalist author

This May, urban studies majors enrolled in the Capstone Seminar course presented their semester-long research during a juried poster session at the 28th annual Urban Studies Student Research Forum. This year’s undergraduate capstone poster award went to Sam Maurer for his poster, “When AI Becomes Your Neighbor: Support and Contestation in the Development of Hyperscale Data Centers in Southeast Wisconsin.”

Urban studies PhD candidate, Darya Salehi Mava, received the graduate poster award for her poster titled: “Community Wealth Building and Spatial Analysis along the 30th Street Corridor, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.”

This year’s keynote speaker was Bench Ansfield (Assistant Professor of History, Temple University), author of Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City (W. W. Norton, 2025), a finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in History and winner of the 2026 Francis Parkman Prize for the Best Book in American History from the Society of American Historians. Their keynote presentation, “Racial Capitalism during the Burning Years” examined the practice of “brownlining” across American cities and the destructive role played by the insurance industry and landlords who set fire to their own buildings during the 1970s, reshaping entire neighborhoods in the process.

This year’s event also included an urban studies alumni panel of five former students from our BA, MS and PhD degree programs who hold impressive professional and leadership roles in a variety of fields across the Milwaukee/SE WI region and who shared the twists and turns of their particular journey from UWM Urban Studies to their current position.

A young white man with short brown hair and a mustache dressed in business casual stands next to a black, white, and yellow research poster.
Student Sam Maurer won the Undergraduate Capstone Poster award.
A young southeast Asian woman with long black hair wearing a white blazer stands next to a research poster featuring several maps.
Darya Salehi Mava received the Graduate Poster award.
A diverse group of five people sit at a table in front of a small audience. The table has a UWM Urban Studies banner hanging from the edge.
Alumni panel left to right: Nateya Taylor (MS, 2023), Marketing and Communications Coordinator, City of Milwaukee Health Department; Kari Smith (PhD, 2018), Real Estate and Development Manager, Department of City Development, City of Milwaukee; Trevor Jung (BA, 2017), Transit and Mobility Director, City of Racine; Patricia Nájera (PhD, 2018), Executive Director, Oak Creek Campus, MATC; Jonatan Zuñiga (BA, 2015), Program and Evaluation Analyst, Milwaukee County.

Urban Studies students represent UWM at the International Conference of Urban Affairs

A line of six adults sit at a long gray table, some with laptops in front of them.
UWM alumni sat on the panel “Trust, Translation, and Timing: Building Collaborative Urban Knowledge on Milwaukee’s North Side.” Left to right: Jack Rongstad (’25, MS Urban Studies); Mason  Novak (undergraduate major);Yuchen Zhao (PhD Candidate); Henry Beasley (undergraduate major); Maria Rose Francis (PhD candidate); and Sinai Mendoza-Zarate (master’s student).

Urban Studies Programs had an impressive showing at this year’s annual International Conference of Urban Affairs in Chicago. There were 19 presenters in all, including three undergraduate majors (Henry Beasley, Lillian Schoen, and Mason Novak), nine graduate students, one recent MS alum, plus six urban studies faculty. In addition, there were two Milwaukee-based organized panels focused on community engagement research, one of which was organized entirely by graduate and undergraduate students in urban studies. Urban Studies Programs at UWM is the institutional hosting unit for the Urban Affairs Association, the international professional association of urbanists.