I hold a Ph.D. in Planning and Public Policy from the Bloustein School at Rutgers University. My interests lie in the areas of community development, place-based organizations, and the politics of neighborhood identity. In my dissertation, I studied how local stakeholders invoked place-rooted arguments in contesting the proposed closure of Philadelphia public schools in 2013. My research explores the politics and the construction of place through the vantage point of people marginalized by systems of race and class inequality.