Instructors

Daniel D’Oca, Coordinator

Associate Professor in Practice of Urban Planning
Studios Coordinated: 2016 - Present

Daniel D’Oca is an urban planner. He is principal and co-founder of the New York-based architecture, urban design, and planning firm Interboro Partners, and Associate Professor in Practice in Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. At Harvard, Daniel coordinates the second-semester core urban planning studio and leads interdisciplinary, client-based option studios on a range of topics, including reparations, fair housing, refugee resettlement, indigenous land use and land rights, and other equity-based issues.
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Ann Forsyth

Ruth and Frank Stanton Professor of Urban Planning Director of the Master in Urban Planning Program, Urban Planning and Design Thesis Coordinator
Studios Advised: 2016 - Present

Ann Forsyth is the Ruth and Frank Stanton Professor of Urban Planning and Director of the Master in Urban Planning Program. Trained in planning and architecture, Forsyth works mainly on the social aspects of physical planning and urban development. The big issue behind her research and practice is how to make more sustainable and healthy cities. Forsyth’s current research focuses on developing healthier places in a suburbanizing world, with overlapping emphases on aging and planned communities. At Harvard, Forsyth is affiliated with the Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard University Center for the Environment, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Harvard-China Project and the Harvard Global Health Institute. She is a co-leader of the Healthy Places Design Lab and the New Towns Initiative.
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Richard Peiser

Michael D. Spear Professor of Real Estate Development
Studios Taught: 2018 - 2019
Studios Advised: 2020, 2021

Richard Peiser has been the Michael D. Spear Professor of Real Estate Development at the Graduate School of Design since 1998. Peiser's primary research has focused on developing an understanding of the response of real estate developers to the market place and to the institutional environment in which they operate, particularly in the areas of urban redevelopment, affordable housing, and suburban sprawl. Current research projects focus on non-performing loans, suburban redevelopment, and new towns. A planner and entrepreneur-developer, as well as an expert in real estate finance, he has also demonstrated an interest in spatial and design issues as well as in the economics of land development.
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Stephen Gray

Associate Professor of Urban Design
Studios Taught: 2016 - 2018, 2021

Stephen Gray is an Associate Professor of Urban Design and founder of Boston-based design firm Grayscale Collaborative. Operating at the intersection of research and practice, Gray’s interests center on political and cultural justice in cities, socio-ecological urban design approaches to resilience, and the intersectionality of humanitarian aid and design. His work acknowledges the relationship between race, class, and the production of space, interrogates design’s contribution to and complicity with structural and infrastructural racism, and develops methodologies and interventions that address inequity, exclusion, social justice, and precarity at the scales of infrastructures, communities, metropolitans, and the globe.
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Kathy Spiegelman

Design Critic in Urban Planning and Design
Studios Taught: 2016 - Present

Kathy Spiegelman, formerly head of planning and real estate at Harvard University and Chief Planner for Harvard’s Allston Development, currently holds the title of Vice President and Chief of Campus Planning and Development for Northeastern University. In between these university leadership roles, Kathy served as a strategic consultant for private and public clients seeking innovative solutions to real estate, physical planning and community development challenges. Having started in historic preservation planning at the Cambridge Historical Commission, Kathy expanded her planning experience to include city, campus, strategic and capital planning. She developed expertise in community development, real estate, affordable housing, and the communication of complex, long-range processes for change.
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Brie Henshold

Design Critic in Urban Planning and Design
Studios Taught: 2019 - Present

Brie Hensold is an urban planner, co-founder and principal of Agency Landscape + Planning, based in Cambridge. At Agency, Brie leads projects nationally across the full spectrum of planning and design, with a focus on integration of urban environments with natural systems planning and resilience. With a passion for understanding and improving communities and places, Brie's work has been celebrated for innovative community engagement .
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Carole Voulgaris

Assistant Professor of Urban Planning
Studios Taught: 2020

Carole Turley Voulgaris is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. Carole's research focuses on explaining what influences individuals' and households' decisions on how to travel through cities, and how transportation planning institutions use information about those decisions to inform plans, policies, and infrastructure designs. She is particularly interested in the development and use of quantitative metrics to describe complex characteristics of the built environment, particularly those believed to influence travel behavior.
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Jennifer Molinsky

Senior Research Associate, Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design
Studios Taught: 2019

Jennifer Molinsky is a Senior Research Associate at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University and a Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design. Jennifer manages the Center’s research on housing for older adults.  Jennifer’s work has also focused on housing affordability.
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Fred Merrill, FAICP, LEED AP

Principal Planner, Sasaki
Studios Taught: 2018

Fred is a senior planner with 39 years of national experience planning and designing urban districts, corridors, neighborhoods, central business districts, master planned communities, and mixed-use developments. He also has national experience planning for repurposing brownfields, military bases, and former industrial sites. His projects are based on strong planning and design ideas, concepts, and best practices that utilize the latest technology for analysis, illustration, communication, and public engagement.  Fred is also a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners, one of the planning profession’s highest honors.
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