Faculty

Profile

Evren Uzer is a NYC-based educator, urban planner, and community practitioner working on civic engagement in planning and design. She is an Associate Professor of Strategic Design and Urban Practice and currently the Associate Director of the MS Strategic Design and Management Program at Parsons School of Design, The New School. Her current research focuses on community engagement, critical heritage studies, and feminist spatial practices. For education-focused partnerships and co-design projects, she regularly collaborates with NYC-based community organizations and public agencies. She is the Principal Investigator for Community Engagement, a curricular research project, and the Foundations: Teaching and Learning Frameworks for Equitable Community Engagement course for Faculty, both of which she collaborates with Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo. Evren Uzer is a New York City-based educator, urban planner, and community practitioner whose work focuses on civic engagement in planning and design. She is Associate Professor of Strategic Design and Urban Practice at Parsons School of Design, The New School, where she also serves as Associate Director of the MS Strategic Design and Management program. Her current research explores community engagement, critical heritage studies, and feminist spatial practices.

Uzer regularly collaborates with New York City community organizations and public agencies on educational partnerships and co-design projects. Together with Cynthia Lawson-Jaramillo, she is working on Community Engagement, a curricular research project, where she is the principal investigator and Foundations: Teaching and Learning Frameworks for Equitable Community Engagement, a faculty course.

Uzer holds a PhD and a BSc in Urban and Regional Planning and an MSc in Urban Design from Istanbul Technical University. Her doctoral dissertation, completed in 2010, examined cultural heritage at risk. She joined Parsons in 2015 after serving as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Gothenburg’s School of Design and Crafts in Sweden from 2013 to 2015. There, her research focused on heritage activism. From 2016 to 2021, she contributed to “Reconciliatory Heritage: Reconstructing Heritage in a Time of Violent Fragmentations,” a project funded by Vetenskapsrådet, the Swedish Research Council.

She has taught at Pratt Institute in New York City, Istanbul Technical University’s Faculty of Architecture in Istanbul, Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, and the Bergen School of Architecture in Norway.

Uzer’s practice spans community-engaged planning and design through the Collective for Community, Culture and Environment (CCCE) and artistic research through roomservices. Across these initiatives, she works in advocacy planning, co-design, artistic research, and nonacademic and unconventional forms of publishing.

CCCE is a New York City-based interdisciplinary collective of women and women-identified practitioners. Its projects advance economic resilience, cultural diversity, public health, social justice, and environmental sustainability, with a particular emphasis on involving low- and moderate-income residents and communities in decisions that shape their environments and everyday lives. Roomservices is an artistic research collaboration dedicated to practice-based and experimental design projects addressing DIY urbanism, artistic research, and collaborative practice.with Cynthia Lawson-Jaramillo.

Evren has a PhD and BSc in Urban and Regional Planning, and MSc in Urban Design, from Istanbul Technical University. Her PhD thesis (2010) is on cultural heritage at risk. Evren joined Parsons in 2015 from University of Gothenburg in Sweden where she was a postdoctoral research fellow between 2013-2015 in the School of Design and Crafts where she worked on her project focusing on Heritage activism and 2016-2021 on "Reconciliatory Heritage: Reconstructing Heritage in a Time of Violent Fragmentations" funded by Vetenskapsradet (VR), Swedish Research Council . She has previously taught at Pratt Institute in NYC, and her prior teaching also includes ITU Faculty of Architecture in Istanbul- Turkey, Auckland University of Technology in Auckland New Zealand, and Bergen School of Architecture in Norway. 

Evren’s practice is currently split between community engagement, planning and design work at Collective for Community, Culture and Environment-CCCE  and her artistic practice at roomservices. Through these two initiatives, she works on advocacy planning, artistic research, co-design and non-academic and non-conventional forms of publishing. CCCE is a NYC based, an interdisciplinary collective of women and women identified individuals, working on projects that further economic resilience, cultural diversity, public health, social justice, and environmental sustainability especially focusing on engaging low- and moderate-income residents and communities to shape decisions about their environment and everyday life. Roomservices is an artistic research collaboration for practice-based and experimental design projects, dealing with issues such as DIY urbanism, artistic research and collaborative practices.