Nine new faculty affiliates bring expertise from variety of disciplines

September 22, 2026, Cambridge Massachusetts—Nine faculty members from six Harvard schools and departments have accepted two-year faculty affiliations at the Bloomberg Center for Cities, joining 65 current affiliates.

The new affiliates join a university-wide community of scholars working across disciplines to advance research and teaching on cities and urban problem-solving. Through its faculty affiliate community, the Center connects expertise from across Harvard with the challenges city leaders are working to solve—and creates opportunities for scholars to collaborate with one another, practitioners, and students.

The nine new affiliates bring expertise spanning change management and innovative leadership, public finance and urban planning, the changing media environment, economic inequality and regional job loss, and the role of technology in improving government and resident well-being.

Creating more opportunities for faculty and scholars to engage with cities

Building and supporting a university-wide faculty community is a core priority of the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University. The Center creates opportunities for faculty to pursue new research, exchange ideas across disciplines, engage with city leaders, and bring their scholarship into classrooms and city halls.

This year, the Center is expanding those opportunities. It recently awarded funding to 20 faculty-led projects and is preparing to launch Open Research Calls focused on housing. The Center is also supporting three new faculty-led efforts: the Artificial Intelligence and Cities Lab at Harvard Business School, the ReBuild Initiative at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the Harvard Urban Health Initiative at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Beyond Harvard, the Center recently launched the Bloomberg Harvard Visiting Scholars Program, which will bring researchers to campus for a semester or academic year to advance research on urban problem-solving and city leadership while engaging with faculty, students, practitioners, and the broader intellectual community at the Center.

Faculty affiliates also engage through research conferences and roundtables, public events, student study groups, and collaborations that translate scholarship into teaching cases, datasets, practitioner resources, and other tools. These activities are designed to strengthen connections across Harvard while creating a two-way exchange between scholarship and practice: challenges facing city leaders can inform new research, and resulting knowledge can return to cities to strengthen urban problem-solving.

“Every new cohort of faculty affiliates reminds us how much appetite there is across Harvard for work that matters to cities. This group brings fresh energy and rigor to questions city leaders are grappling with right now,” said Bloomberg Center for Cities Director Jorrit de Jong. “We’re glad to welcome them into our community and look forward to the ideas, partnerships, and real-world impact that will come from their work.”

Meet all Bloomberg Center for Cities faculty affiliates from 11 Harvard schools.