Brandi Thompson Summers

Brandi T. Summers, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City (UNC Press, 2019). Her research examines the relationship between and function of race, space, urban infrastructure, and architecture. Her current research includes a second book, Oakland Echoes: Reimagining and Reclaiming the Black City (under contract with the University of California Press), which explores and highlights the roots and routes of this resistance and reclamation, not only as a response to urban gentrification and related economic policies, but also as a quest to think about the past, present, and future of a Black city; and “The Archive of Urban Futures,” a multi-modal archival project, funded by the Mellon Foundation, that focuses on questions of history, value, the right to place, memory, and erasure in Black Oakland. Dr. Summers is a Contributing Writer for Places Journal, and has published several articles that appear in both scholarly and popular publications, including the New York Times, The Boston Globe, Antipode, and Urban Geography.

Summers received a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, an M.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in History from the University of Pennsylvania.