Vanessa L. Deane to serve as Visiting Professor of Urban Planning at Sorbonne Université in Paris, France

Vanessa L. Deane will serve as Visiting Professor of Urban Planning at Sorbonne Université in Paris, France during the Fall 2022 semester. In this capacity, she endeavors to explore the praxis of climate justice, urban development, and local governance through a French national and geopolitical context.

A leading research institution, the Sorbonne Université is one of the most prestigious universities in Europe with a reputation for academic excellence across humanities, science, and the arts. Its globally recognized stature and contributions to education have drawn praise from France’s Minister of Higher Education and Research and League of European Research Libraries for its commitment to open sciences and access to publications.

Professor Deane is Assistant Clinical Professor of Urban Planning and Public Service and Director of the Urban Planning program at NYU Wagner. Her research is rooted in the political economy of disasters, primarily in small island developing states. In light of a changing climate and rising instances of natural hazards, she explores the postcolonial adaptive capacity of select francophone nations facing current and imminent disaster threats.

She won the 2021-2022 Outstanding Decentralization Paper Award for Latin America and the Caribbean for her analysis of Haiti's institutional development challenges, accentuated by the 2010 earthquake and its aftermath. Her celebrated paper, "Towards a Decentralized Haitian State: The Promises and Shortcomings of the Post-Duvalier Constitution of 1987," was summarized in a recent post.