New Full-Time Faculty for Fall 2024
Laura Landau
Assistant Professor | Political Science
Originally from Providence, Rhode Island, Laura Landau moved to New York City as an undergraduate student. “I fell in love with the city as soon as I moved here and never want to leave!” She’s called it home ever since.
Laura joins Kingsborough Community College's history, philosophy and political science department as a full-time assistant professor, where she will be teaching Intro to U.S. Government (POL 5100) this fall as well as Environmental Politics (POL 5800) in the spring. She hopes to create new courses on climate change, resilience, and environmental justice.
Her path to education was unexpected. “When I was very young, I wanted to be a ballerina. [She was a company member with the State Ballet of Rhode Island through high school.] After that, I had a lot of interests and potential career paths. In middle and high school, I was interested in architecture, which was what eventually led me to the more interdisciplinary fields of urban studies and city planning.”
She enrolled in a dual degree program at Barnard and the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) as an undergraduate and graduated with a bachelor's degree from each college, majoring in urban studies at Barnard and in Jewish art and material culture at JTS. Interested in policy work, she pursued a master's degree in city planning at Pratt Institute, where she came to enjoy research and writing. She went on to Rutgers University, where she recently earned a PhD in human geography, a field of geography that examines the impact of human activity on the earth's surface. It was there that she discovered her passion for teaching.
"When I started as a teaching assistant, I realized how engaging teaching can be. My favorite thing about teaching is getting to know my students, finding out what they are excited about, and then helping them follow those interests while providing guidance and framing. The topics I teach often have a direct bearing on the lives of my students, and I love seeing them situate their lived experiences in the course material and draw on lessons to strengthen their stances.” In addition to teaching at Rutgers, she has also taught urban ecology at the City College Spitzer School of Architecture.
Laura’s current research interests include environmental and social justice, community organizing, climate change, and public space as social infrastructure. Her work extends beyond the classroom: She's a regular contributor to The Nature of Cities and has published articles in academic journals.
She brings a unique blend of academic rigor and real-world experience to her teaching. Between her master’s and PhD studies, Laura worked with the USDA Forest Service at the New York City Urban Field Station, an experience that fueled her passion for equitable public spaces and parks in urban areas. “A lot of people are surprised that the Forest Service has a presence in such an urban area, but there is so much green space in NYC! A lot of my research looks at the importance of these spaces of social infrastructure to create stronger networks of care in the face of climate change and other crises.”
She's hoping to be able to incorporate guest speakers and field visits into her classes, explaining, "Hearing from practitioners and getting outside can do so much to ground the information we learn in the classroom."
Outside of academia, Laura is an avid traveler, having visited 23 countries.
As she embarks on this new chapter at Kingsborough, Laura is looking forward to meeting her students and enjoying the beautiful waterfront between classes.