On Wednesday, April 22, 2026, Elizabeth Sanna Barron presented to Cities@Tufts on Emplacing Sustainability. Geographers understand the term place to be short-hand for a diverse set of perspectives and practices. Place is space made real and thick with description, history, and experience. It can incorporate fixed and fluid ideas about the physicality of landscapes, the political negotiations of boundaries, ideas about identity, and attachments to each other and nature. How can we use the richness of the concept of place to reframe sustainability - how we understand it for ourselves, how we work on it as scholars, and how we communicate it to the public? This is the topic of Emplaced Sustainability, Dr. Barron’s current book project, which she will present at the upcoming lecture.

On Wednesday, April 15, 2026, Penn Loh presented to Cities@Tufts on Solidarity Economy Movements in Massachusetts. This talk shared stories of the emergence of solidarity economy movements in Massachusetts. There is increasing recognition that colonial capitalist modernity is not only wreaking havoc on people and the planet, but that this world cannot sustain itself. Loh traced how these movements, many of which he has been involved with, have been fighting for and building over the past fifteen years various ways of living in interdependence and collective care, around projects such as worker-owned cooperatives, community land trusts, community investment funds, mutual aid, and more.

On Wednesday, April 8, 2026, Emma Osore presented to Cities@Tufts on Designing with Artists and Aunties. Osore, Executive Director of BlackSpace, discusses how community cultural leaders can shape more just and resilient neighborhoods What if the most effective designers of a neighborhood are already embedded within it? Designing with Aunties and Artists reframes community development by highlighting cultural producers and trusted community caretakers as key partners in building imaginitive, resilient, inclusive places, especially during periods of neighborhood stress or transition. Drawing on ten years of leading BlackSpace, this talk offers practical insights into culture-first approaches that help organizations design more durable, trusted, and community-aligned projects.

On Wednesday, April 1, 2026, Benjamin Sovacool presented to Cities@Tufts on Conceptual Frameworks and New Frontiers in Energy Justice. This presentation explores how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision-making and highlight the futurity, fairness, and equity dimensions of energy production and use. It defines "energy justice" as a global energy system that fairly distributes both the benefits and costs of energy services, and one that contributes to more representative and inclusive energy decision-making. Such an assessment brings together core understandings of distributional and procedural justice alongside cosmopolitan interpretations of equity and recognitional notions of fairness.

On Wednesday, March 11, 2026, Daniel Laurison presented to Cities@Tufts on Tackling the Political Disconnect. A functioning democratic society must involve all kinds of people in deciding who will hold the power to enact laws and allocate tax dollars. However, working-class and low-income people vote at significantly lower rates than the more privileged in the US, and their participation has been declining in recent elections. Our research team conducted interviews with 144 people who rarely or never vote to understand their lives, their views of politics, and how they might be moved to be part of US democracy. This talk describes some of the key results of those interviews, and our recommendations for increasing political participation among low-income and working-class people in the U.S. The people we spoke with were not apathetic or ignorant, and most told us making voting easier would not bring them to the polls. Instead, we found that low-income and working-class people see electoral politics as deeply disconnected from their lives, experiences, and communities; politics seems like a game played among the privileged, rather than a means to solving the problems they face. A fully inclusive democracy requires creating and sustaining real connections with people and communities who do not currently feel represented.

On Wednesday, February 25, 2026, Edward Bartholomew presented to Cities@Tufts on Light Justice in the Public Realm. Light Justice is the practice of planning, designing, implementing, and investing in good lighting for historically neglected neighborhoods through a process of stakeholder engagement and community supported placemaking with light. We believe that “everyone deserves quality lighting and beneficial darkness.” This talk will address lighting equity in sustainable and healthy exterior spaces. It examines the causes and characteristics of how lighting is weaponized against underserved, oppressed communities, and the impact of overlighting on human physical and mental health.