Elizabeth Sweet
Biography
Elizabeth L Sweet is the Associate Dean in the School for the Environment and Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Community Development. She is an expert in planning theory and qualitative research methodologies. Professor Sweet engages in collaborative projects examining links between economies, violence, and identities as they relate to community economic development and environmental justice.
Area of Expertise
Planning Theory
Qualitative Methods
Violence Against women
Anti-Racist, Feminst, and Decolonial Planning
Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Latin American, Native and Black Urban Issues
Degrees
Ph.D. Public Policy Analysis-Urban Planning and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago
Master of Urban Planning and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago
B.A.Soviet and East European Studies, Boston University
Professional Publications & Contributions
2025 Sweet, E. L. Rethinking Spatial Analysis: Native, Black, & Latina/x Feminist theories and Methods for Engagement, Equity and Justice, in Designing Gender Sensitive Spaces for Consenting Cities: Practices and Provocations. Monash University XYX Lab Gender and Place. Routledge.
2024 Sweet, E. L. Addressing violence against women means reimagining time, space and relationships, Nature Cities (invited) 1, 394–395.
2024 Biswas, R. and Sweet, E. L. Reimagining the urban through agency as healing justice: Stories from Kolkata and Chicago. Urban Studies online first 1-17.
2023 Sweet, E. L., Vasudevan, R., and Ortiz Escalante, S. Recrafting Urban Narratives through Body Map Storytelling, Lunch 17___Craft, University of Virginia Design Journal. pp.66-75.
2023 Sweet, E. L. and Harper-Anderson, E. Race, space, and trauma: Using community accountability for healing justice, special issue Anti-Racist Futures: Disrupting Racist Planning Practices in Workplaces, Institutions, and Communities. Journal of the American Planning Association, 89(4), 554–565.
2022 Sweet, E. L. and Raciti, A. Commentary: Planning theories struggle at the intersections of gendered, colonized, and racialized bodies, Journal of the American Planning Association, (invited) 88(4), 583-584.
2022 Sweet, E. L., K. Williams Witherspoon, K. Turner, and E. Fornero. Social-cultural quantum optics: How we learn to see diversity, equity, and inclusion. Metropolitan
Universities Journal, special issue Anti-Racism, equity, and inclusion at urban institutions 33(2), 68-91.
2022 Jenkins, L. and E. L. Sweet Embracing a culture of humility, diversity, & inclusion: A case study of a library’s “Radical Compassion” programming. Implementing Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: A Handbook for Academic Libraries editors Lee, C., Lym, B. Bryant, T, Cain, J & Schlesinger, K. the Association of College and Research Libraries.
2021 Zhang, Y., S. Smith, M. Bell, A. Mueller, M. Eckelman, S. Wylie, E. L. Sweet, P. Chen, and A. Niemeier. Pollution inequality 50 years after the Clean Air Act: The need for hyperlocal data and action, Environmental Research Letters, 16(7) 1-4
2021 Sweet, E. L. Anti-Blackness/Nativeness and erasure in Mexico: Black feminist geographies and Latin American decolonial dialogues for U.S. urban planning, the Journal of Race Ethnicity and the City.1(2): 78-92.
2021 Sweet E.L., R. Sanders, and D. M. Peters. Reversing the gaze, Insiders out, outsiders in: Stories from the ivory tower and the field. Journal of Urban Affairs, 43(7), 1028-1041.
2019 Arenas, I and E. L. Sweet, Disassembling cities: spatial, social, and conceptual trajectories across the urban globe. In Disassembled Cities: Social and Spatial Strategies to Reassemble Communities in Cities Across the Globe, E. L. Sweet (ed), London and New York, Routledge Press, pgs. 3-14.
2019 Arenas, I and E. L. Sweet, The organizing logics of predatory formations: Individualism, identity, and the consumption of goods as the good life. In Disassembled Cities: Social and Spatial Strategies to Reassemble Communities in Cities Across the Globe, E. L. Sweet (ed), London and New York, Routledge Press, pgs. 25-31.
2019 Arenas, I and E. L. Sweet, The organizing logics of predatory formations: militarization and the spectacle of the (in)security state. In Disassembled Cities: Social and Spatial Strategies to Reassemble Communities in Cities Across the Globe, E. L. Sweet (ed), London and New York, Routledge Press, pgs. 73-82.
2019 Arenas, I and E. L. Sweet, The organizing logics of predatory formations: disassembling democracy and urban planning. In Disassembled Cities: Social and Spatial Strategies to Reassemble Communities in Cities Across the Globe, E. L. Sweet (ed), London and New York, Routledge Press, pgs. 141-148.
2019 E. L. Sweet and M. Chakars, Dissassembledge in the Siberian city of Ulan-Ude: How ethnic Buryats reconstruct through time and space. In Disassembled Cities: Social and Spatial Strategies to Reassemble Communities in Cities Across the Globe, E. L. Sweet (ed), London and New York, Routledge Press, pgs. 156-170.
2019 E. L. Sweet, (editor) Disassembled Cities: Social and Spatial Strategies to Reassemble Communities in Cities Across the Globe, Routledge Press.
2019 Sweet E.L., R. Sanders, and D. M. Peters. Reversing the Gaze, Insiders Out, Outsiders In: Stories from the Ivory Tower and the Field. Journal of Urban Affairs.
2019 Turner K. M., E. L. Sweet, and *E. Fornaro. From Ferguson to Charleston and Beyond: Talking about Race and Diversity in the classroom. Communication Teacher 33(1): 38-44
2018 D. M. Peters, E. L. Sweet, K. M. Turner and K. Williams-Witherspoon. The Elephant in the Room: Challenges and Prejudice in the Academy? In Not White/Straight/Male/Healthy Enough Being “Other” in the Academy, M. Moreno, K. Quinn-Sánchez, M. Shaul (eds.), Cambridge Scholar, pg 21-28.
2018 Sweet, E. L. Cultural Humility: An Open Door for Planners to Locate Themselves and Decolonize Planning Theory, Education and Practice. eJournal of Public Affairs 7(2):1-16.
2017 Sweet, E. L. and S. Ortiz Escalante. Engaging Territorio Cuerpo-Tierra through body and community mapping: A methodology for making communities safer. Gender Place in Culture 24(4): 594-606.
2017 D. M. Peters, S. Peterson-Lewis, R. Sanders, E. L. Sweet, K. M. Turner and K. Williams-Witherspoon. Treading Treacherous Waters: A conversation with Women Faculty of Color on Teaching Race, In Leadership, in Equity, and Social Justice in American Higher Education- A Reader, C. P. Gause (ed), Peter Lang, pg 128-141.
2017 Sweet, E. L. The benefits and challenges of Collective and Creative Storytelling through visceral methods within the neoliberal university. Geoforum 82: 202-203.
2016 Sweet, E. L. Carceral feminism: Linking the state, intersectional bodies, and the dichotomy of place. Dialogues in Human Geography 6(2): 202–205.
2016 Sweet, E. L. Locating Migrant Latina Economic Activities in a Diverse Economies Framework: Evidence from Chicago. Gender Place and Culture 23(1): 55-71.
2016 Sweet, E. L. Gender, Violence and the City of Emotion, In The Participatory City, Y. Beebeejaun, (ed) Berlin, Jovis, pg 121-127.
2015 Sweet, E. L. and S. Ortiz Escalante. Bringing bodies into planning: visceral methods, fear, and gender violence. Urban Studies, 52(10): 1826-1845.
2015 Joshi, S., P. McCutcheon, and E. L. Sweet. Visceral geographies of whiteness and invisible microagressions. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 14(1): 298-323
2015 Sweet, E. L. Latina Kitchen Table Planning Saving Communities: Intersectionality and Insurgencies in an Anti-Immigrant City. Local Environments: International Journal of Justice and Sustainability 20(6): 728-743.
2015 Hayes-Conroy, A and E. L. Sweet. Whose adequacy?: (Re)Imagining food security with displaced women in Medellin, Colombia. Agriculture and Human Values 32(3): 373-384.
2015 Chakars, M., and E. L. Sweet. Women and the economics of survival before and after regime change: Diverse economies and work strategies in the Russian Republic of Buryatia. GeoJournal 79(5): 649-663.
2013 Ortiz Escalante, S. and E. L. Sweet. 2013 Ortiz Escalante, S. and E. L. Sweet Migrant Women’s Safety: Framing, Policies and Practice, In Building Inclusive Cities: Women’s Safety and the Right to the City, Whitzman, C. et al. (eds.), London and New York, Routledge, pg 53-72.
2012 Sweet, E. L. New Configurations of Racism after 9/11: Gender and Race in the Context of the Anti-Immigrant City, In Reinventing Race, Reinventing Racism, J. J. Betancur and C. Harring (eds.), Brill Publishers, pg 241-257.
2012 Drigo, M. V., C. Ehlschlaeger and E. L. Sweet. Intimate Partner Violence and Support Systems, Ecologist-Developed Spatially-Explicit Dynamic Landscape Models (Modeling Dynamic Systems), edited by James Westervelt, New York, Springer Publishing Company, Chapter 14: 234-254.
2012 Sweet, E. L., S. Lee and S. Ortiz Escalante. 'A Slow Assassination of Your Soul' Race, Citizenship and Gender Identities in the Borderlands of New Economic Places, Transnational Migration, Gender and Rights, Ragnhild Sollund and Liam Leonard (eds.), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pgs. 99-126.
2011 Sweet, E. L. and H. Etienne. Commentary: Diversity in Urban Planning Education and Practice. Journal of Planning Education and Research 31(3): 332-339.
2010 Sweet, E. L. and M. Chakars. Identity, Culture, Land, and Language: Stories of Insurgent Planning in the Republic of Buryatia in Russia Journal of Planning Education and Research 30(2): 198-209 (also see letter to the editor and my response regarding this article).
2010 Sweet, E. L. and S. Ortiz Escalante. Planning Responds to Gender Violence: Evidence from Spain, Mexico, and the Unites States Urban Studies 47(10): 2129-2147 (19th most downloaded article in Urban Studies in September 2010 and 17th in October 2010) (published in Spanish in Jornadas Estudios Urbanos, Género y Feminismo: teorías y experiencias in 2013: 39-62 ISBN 978-84-616-7657-6).
2010 Sweet, E. L. Diversity in Urban Planning: From the Discipline to Department Climates, Implementing Diversity: Contemporary Challenges and Best Practices at Predominantly White Universities, Jorge Chapa, Helen Neville, and Margaret Browne Huntt (eds.), Champaign, IL, Center for Democracy in a Multiracial Society, pgs. 224-246.
2009 Sweet, E. L. Ethnographic Understandings of Gender and Economic Transition in Siberia: Im plications for Planners and Policy Makers European Planning Studies Journal 17(5): 701-718.
2007 Sweet, E. L. Beyond WID WAD and GAD: Expanding Gendered Economic Development Theory Part 2, История и культура народов сибири стран центральной и восточной азии батуевские чтения (History and Culture of the Siberian People, Central and East Asia Countries: Batuevskie Readings), Ulan Ude, Russia 486-496
2006 Sweet, E. L. Spy or Feminist: “Grrrilla” Research on the Margin. Demos, V., & Texler Segal, M. (Eds.) Gender and the local-global nexus: theory, research, and action, pgs.145-162.
2006 Sweet, E. L. Beyond WID WAD and GAD: Expanding Gendered Economic Development Theory Part 1 История и культура народов сибири стран центральной и восточной азии батуевские чтения. (History and Culture of the Siberian People, Central and East Asia Countries: Batuevskie Readings), Ulan Ude, Russia 125-133.
2006 Capeheart, L. and E. L. Sweet, Condiciόnes, Drogas, y La Cárcel: Life Circumstances and Drug Usage of Latino Arrestees in Miami, New York, San Antonio, and San Jose Criminal Justice Policy Review 17(4): 427-450 (among the 50 most read articles in Criminal Justice Policy Review).
Additional Information
Using feminist, anti-racist and decolonial frameworks, Dr. Sweet's work in U.S. Native, Black, Latino and Latin American communities has led to long term collaborations and inclusive projects that both push the boundaries of planning theory and methods while at the same time provides practical planning interventions. She has pioneered the use of body map storytelling and community mapping as innovative ways to co-create data and strategies with communities on a wide range of issues and urban problems. Theoretically, these methods create awareness that enables planners and communities to re-envision their relationships with environments and see their visceral, historical, and spiritual bonds. These new understandings promote new practices. Her most recent project is in Salem MA, in El Punto neighborhood, working with a Latino community using body and community mapping to document the poor quality of their water, while developing strategies to improve water quality. She is also working in the Costa Chica in Mexico to chronicle Afro-Mexican traditional ecological knowledge. She has studied how Anti Black/Native narratives in Mexico impact Mexicans/Chicanos in U.S. cities. Professor Sweet has been very active in promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion within university settings through organizing events, student recruitment, and publishing both research and teaching articles on the same.