Joseph Heathcott is the Director of the Laboratory for Urban Spatial and Landscape Research, and Chair of Urban and Environmental Studies at The New School.  His work examines the metropolis and its diverse cultures, institutions, and environments within a comparative and global perspective. His research and teaching interests include: cities real and imagined; social and spatial inequality; history and theory of the built environment; race, class, and urban planning; urban redevelopment; cities as living archives of creativity, urbanity, and design.

​

In 2019 Prof. Heathcott taught at the Paris campus of Parsons, and served as a Visiting Scholar at L'École Urbaine, Sciences Po.  In 2016 he was the Mellon Distinguished Fellow at the Princeton University School of Architecture.  During the academic year 2010-2011, he served as the U.S. Fulbright Distinguished Chair to the United Kingdom at the University of the Arts in London, and as a Senior Visiting Scholar at the London School of Economics. He has also been a visiting scholar at the University of Maastricht, the Catholic University of Lisbon, and the University of Vienna.   In 2023 he will be a Distinguished Visting Scholar at the Advanced Research Collaborative at the CUNY Graduate Center.

​

Heathcott's work has appeared in a range of venues, from books and magazines, to exhibits, blogs, 'zines, and journals of opinion.  He has been awarded fellowships and grants from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, U.S. Fulbright, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Erasmus Institute, the Mellon Foundation, The Global Archtiectural History Teaching Collaborative/MIT, the Brown Center for the Humanities, and the Zolberg Institute for Migraton Studies. He has been invited to lecture, consult, and judge design reviews in a wide variety of venues both in the U.S. and internationally. He frequently volunteers his time with neighborhood groups and community organizations around issues of planning, preservation, and urban design.

 

Currently, Heathcott serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Society for Architectural Historians, Planning Perspectives, the International Journal of Architectural Education, and on the advisory board for the Global Urban History Project.  He also served on the Boards of Directors of the Center for Urban Pedagogy and the Urban History Association, and as President of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History. 

​

​