The University of Texas (UT) at Austin School of Architecture is launching a new program dedicated to race, gender, and the built environment. In one-year appointments supported by the university’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, professors Anna Brand and Andrea Roberts will serve as emerging scholar fellows and teach courses on race, urban development, and cultural landscape.
Brand comes to UT Austin from the University of New Orleans Department of Planning and Urban Studies; her research focuses on “black mecca” neighborhoods such as Chicago’s Bronzeville and Houston’s 3rd and 4th Wards. Roberts completed her doctorate at UT, in the architecture school’s community and regional planning and historic preservation programs; she founded the Texas Freedom Colonies Project, an initiative recording settlement origin stories and African-American contributions to planning.
