IHP Cities in the 21st Century: People, Planning, and Politics (Spring)

Faculty and Staff

Program Director
Forrest Hylton

Faculty
Kelly Rosenthal	Seth Zeren

Country Coordinators
Waly Faye	Sonal Mehta	Carolina Rovetta
Chris Westcott	Mariane Yade

Trustees Fellow
Katie Smith

Forrest Hylton, Ph.D.
Program Director
Forrest Hylton graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Reed College and completed his MA in Latin American history, with a certificate in Latin American studies, at the University of Pittsburgh, with a Foreign Languages and Area Studies Fellowship from the US Department of Education. His MA thesis was published in Spanish in ‘Ya es otro tiempo’: Cuatro momentos de insurgencia indígena (Muela del Diablo, 2003), now in its third printing in Bolivia.

His PhD thesis in Latin American history, supported by a number of grants and fellowships and entitled “Reverberations of Insurgency: Indian Communities, the Federal War of 1899, and the Regeneration of Bolivia,” won the Dean’s Outstanding Dissertation Award in the Humanities at New York University and is being revised for publication. He is the author of Evil Hour in Colombia (Verso, 2006), translated into French and Portuguese, and, with Sinclair Thomson, he is the co-author of Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics (Verso, 2007), translated into French.

Since 2000, he has taught undergraduate lecture courses, graduate and undergraduate seminars, adult education classes, and English as a Second Language, in La Paz/El Alto, Bolivia; Bogotá, Colombia; and Brooklyn/Manhattan, New York, working with grassroots organizations and leaders as well as universities. From 2010–2012, he was an associate professor at the Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá), first in political science and then in history. In September 2012, he will be a postdoctoral fellow at the Tamiment Library’s Center for the Study of the US in the Cold War, at New York University, where he will complete research for a book to be entitled ‘Doing the Right Thing’: Labor, Democracy, and Organized Crime on the Brooklyn Waterfront, under contract with Oxford University Press.

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Waly Faye, MA
Country Co-Coordinator: Dakar, Senegal
Waly Faye is a development manager. He is currently the study abroad programs coordinator at the West African Research Center in Dakar, Senegal, and also serves as coordinator for many faculty development programs in Senegal. He has significant experience in international development and international education as well as experience planning field excursions. He has acquired an understanding of the social, economic, and cultural environments of Senegal by working with many development NGOs in different areas of the country. He holds a master’s degree in development projects management.

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Sonal Mehta
Country Coordinator, India
Trained as a space scientist and technologist, Sonal Mehta has a master’s degree in physics and a postgraduate diploma in space sciences. She worked as a space scientist at the Indian Space Research Organization in her early career. She then worked in the field of science education, developing creative and activity-based learning for science education programs and national science textbooks. She was engaged in the science and environment movement and conducted research on science policy and philosophy. She has been a human rights and women’s rights activist for more than twenty-five years. As a grassroots activist she has worked with several national and state movements to improve the social, political, and economic rights of marginalized, indigenous, and untouchable communities in India. She has travelled extensively in India, Canada, Europe, and Asia. She has participated in and coordinated the World Social Forum process at regional, national, and international levels. She is also actively involved with the International Women’s Movement of rank-and-file women. A founder of Eklavya Foundation, she is currently working on sustainable development alternatives for an indigenous community of forest dwellers and bamboo workers in the state of Gujarat in western India.

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Kelly Rosenthal
Traveling Faculty
Kelly was born in South Africa, and grew up in a country experiencing the death throes of apartheid. Her political consciousness and commitment to social justice were honed in this environment and drew her to study social anthropology, history, and geography at the University of Cape Town, where she was active in student politics. She went on to complete an MSc in African studies at St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford. After returning to South Africa, Kelly established a postgraduate research methods course at the alma mater of Nelson Mandela, Fort Hare University, in the Eastern Cape. She went on to teach political and medical anthropology at the University of Cape Town, and worked as a community organizer for a civil society organization in an informal settlement, which mobilized youth around the right to education. Her academic work has focused on urban social movements in the post-apartheid context, and she has published a chapter based on research in Soweto in Popular Politics and Resistance Movements in South Africa (Beinart and Dawson: 2010).

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Carolina Rovetta, MA
Country Coordinator: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Carolina Rovetta holds a five-year degree in arts from the University of Buenos Aires and a postgraduate degree in contemporary cinema and theater. She has been working in the field of international education for many years. Ms. Rovetta is in charge of designing academic and immersion programs in Argentina for students and institutions from abroad. Her focus is on the interaction between academic content and cultural sensitivity. She is very interested in arts and culture and works as a cultural facilitator for the city of Buenos Aires. She has written several pedagogical guides on cultural activities in immersion. Ms. Rovetta serves as an academic advisor for American students studying abroad in Argentina. She first began working with IHP in 2005 and helped established the Cities in the 21st Century program in Buenos Aires.

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Katie Smith
Trustees Fellow
Katie Smith is a Cities in the 21st Century spring 2006 alumna who is passionate about urban policy and international development. She currently works for Congressman Jerrold Nadler in New York City, focusing on urban policy issues affecting the West Side of Manhattan, and doing advocacy work for the LGBT community. She received a BA in political science from Barnard College of Columbia University in 2007. She wrote her undergraduate thesis on the causes of informal housing, using her IHP experience in Rio de Janeiro as a case study. She previously worked for the American Civil Liberties Union in the LGBT Project.

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Chris Westcott, MA
Country Coordinator
Chris is an urban social justice practitioner, educator, and changemaker based in New York City. Most recently, Chris worked with Freelancers Union and consulted with the Urban Justice Center and Right to the City Alliance, New York, strengthening member and community-based organizations to overcome injustices of the urban environment. Before coming to New York, Chris worked for many years at the intersection of study abroad and social change. For three years Chris worked in San Francisco as a founding staff member of ENGAGE, a network that organizes returned study abroad students to effect local and global change. Before that, Chris was a program facilitator for two years on CIEE’s Thailand program focusing on globalization and development. Chris has a BA in environmental studies from Bates College, and an MA in international educational development, focusing on peace and justice education, from Columbia University. While at Columbia, Chris was assistant teacher for courses on social identity, social change, and human rights education, and he launched a community fellowship program.

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Mariane Yade, MA
Country Co-Coordinator: Dakar, Senegal
Mariane Yade studied at University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, where she obtained a master’s degree in English. She has worked for three years as a study abroad assistant at the West African Research center (WARC). She is currently WARC’s programs and public relations officer in charge of coordinating WARC’s visiting researchers. She also coordinates the study tours hosted by WARC during the summer. She spent three years in Saint Paul, Minnesota, serving as a French lab instructor at Macalester College. Mariane has considerable knowledge of both the Senegalese and US educational systems, and extensive experience coordinating study abroad programs.

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Seth Zeren
Faculty
Seth Zeren is a professional city planner with a background in climate science, experiential education, and sustainable design. He grew up in suburban California, far from the vigorous tumult, excitement, and mystery of cities. It wasn't until he spent the year after college living and teaching in South Korea on a Fulbright grant that he fell in love with the possibility and energy of urban life. While teaching science at a high school over the following years, he began to read planning classics, and his growing interest in urban sustainability as a tool to mitigate climate change led him to Yale University where he earned his master’s in environmental management in 2010. At Yale, Seth focused his studies, research, and internships in urban ecology, sustainable planning, and green real estate development. Seth's passion for combining practical skills with deep theory led him to found the FES 2020 student initiative to successfully reform the school's professional curriculum.

Seth has over three years of experience working in municipal government, developing expertise in community engagement, land use regulation, policy analysis, and legislative writing. He has worked on issues ranging from transit-oriented development and neighborhood revitalization to zoning reform. Since 2009, he has written three new zoning districts and more than a dozen smaller zoning amendments that have been passed into law.

Seth has traveled extensively in South America, East Asia, and Europe. He comes to SIT with a passion for experiential education gained from his own adventures in Peru, Costa Rica, and the Williams Mystic Maritime Studies Program, where he also got his start as a blacksmith.

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Credits: 16

Duration: Spring, 17 weeks

Program Sites:
New York City, New York, USA; Delhi, India; Dakar, Senegal; Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Prerequisites: Previous college-level coursework and/or other preparation in urban studies, anthropology, political science, or other related fields is strongly recommended but not required. Learn More...

Spring program travel itinerary

Other Program Options:

Fall program travel itinerary