Setha M.

Low
Position: Distinguished Professor
Campus Affiliation: Graduate Center
Phone: (212) 817-8725
slow@gc.cuny.edu
Website
Curriculum Vitae
Additional Information
Degrees/Diplomas: PhD, University of California Berkley, 1976
Research Interests: Anthropology of Space and Place; Security and Surveillance;
Private Governance; The Corporate City; Engaged Urban Anthropology of North and
South America; Affective and Embodied Practices
Subfield: Cultural Anthropology
Setha Low received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of
California, Berkeley. She started her career as an Assistant and Associate Professor of
Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, City and Regional Planning, and
Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Low is currently Distinguished
Professor of Environmental Psychology, Geography, Anthropology, and Women’s
Studies, and Director of the Public Space Research Group at The Graduate
Center, City University of New York,. She teaches courses and trains Ph.D. students
in the anthropology of space and place, urban anthropology, emotion and affect, the
body, spaces of security and the corporate city. She has been awarded a Getty
Fellowship, a NEH fellowship, a Fulbright Senior Fellowship and a Guggenheim for
her ethnographic research on public space in Latin America and the United States.
She was president of the American Anthropological Association from 2007 to 2009,
and vice-chair of the World Council of Anthropological Associations from 2011-
2013.

In 2009 she began a collaborative project with Dolores Hayden on spatial methods
and public practices funded by the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences at Stanford, and in 2010 she was a fellow in the Center for Place, Culture
and Politics. In 2011 she became co-chair of the Public Space and Diversity Network,
funded by the Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity. From 2011-
2015 she received funding from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council to study condominiums and private governance in Toronto and
New York with Randy Lippert. From 2017-2020 she has been supported by a Future
of Places Senior Fellowship from KTH in Stockholm, Sweden to research and write a
popular book and series of lectures on “Why Public Space Matters.” As part of this
project she developed a Toolkit for the Ethnographic Study of Space (TESS) with
Suzanne Scheld and Troy Simpson. TESS was highlighted at the 2020 World Urban
Forum 10 in Abu Dhabi where public space and planning practitioners were trained in
this rapid ethnographic method developed for local community use.

She is widely published, with more than a hundred articles and chapters, and lectures
internationally. Her books include Politics of Public Space (2006), with Neil
Smith; Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity (2005), with S.
Scheld and D. Taplin; Behind the Gates: Life, Security and the Pursuit of Happiness
in Fortress America (2004); The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating
Culture (2003), with D. Lawrence-Zuniga; and On the Plaza: The Politics of Public
Space and Culture (2000).

Her most recent books are Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and
Place published by Routledge in 2017, Anthropology and the City: Engaging the
City also from Routledge and Spaces of Security co-edited with M. Maguire from
NYU Press published in 2019. Her current research is on the impact of private
governance and corporate business practices on New York condo and co-op residents
and the development of an ethnographic methodology for the evaluation of social
justice and inclusion in public space.

Her activism in public space and social justice can be followed on her twitter feed
at @sethalow or on thepsrg.org website.