Erin Lilli

Erin, holds a PhD in Environmental Psychology from The Graduate Center, CUNY and is a Research Assistant with CUNY’s Public Space Research Group under the direction of Setha Low. Recently, Erin was a recipient of a Gittell Fellowship to co-develop and implement Teaching Environmental Psychology Critically pedagogy workshops and is a member of the Focused Inquiry Group on Disciplinary Open Education Resources working to make educator content publicly accessible to those teaching in critical Environmental Psychology and related areas.

She is currently an adjunct instructor in Pratt’s Urban Placemaking and Management program and, since 2016, in the Urban Studies Department at Queens College where she was active in her labor union. Erin has received awards and fellowships including the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in the School of Social Science at Queens College, an Open Knowledge Fellowship through The Graduate Center, CUNY, and a Public Space Research Fellowship from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Center for the Future of Places. Additionally, Erin worked as a Writing Around the Curriculum Fellow at Kingsborough Community College.

Erin has taught courses on urban diversity, housing and homelessness, wealth and inequality, and research methods. Her doctoral research focused on Black Geographies of gentrification through the material conditions, contradictions, and experiences of gentrification had by long-term Black residents and homeowners in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Drawing from a racial capitalist context, she utilized residential oral histories to examine resistances to gentrification and is interested in how residents maintain footholds in the neighborhood, both economically and socially.

Master of Architecture, University of Minnesota
Master of Science in Architecture, University of Minnesota
Bachelor of Environmental Design, Texas A&M

Claire Cahen , Erin Lilli & Susan Saegert (2020): Ethical action in the age of austerity: cases of care in two community land trusts, Housing Studies, DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2020.1807472