Research

I study the politics of intimate environments including the production of place or thinking about how state programs and policies influence the everyday and the vernacular, how communities can talk back to that through use, narratives and social reproduction alongside organizing, and then asking what are the methods that we can use to better understand these relationships.

I examine these broad questions through a few main lens: citizenship, immigration and incorporation in place, and environmental justice and urban health.

A self-declared methodological polyglot, I combine quantitative and qualitative spatial analysis with participant observation, visual (and sensory) studies, archival research, and participatory methods.

All of my work is strongly informed by both feminist and critical perspectives, and so praxis – bringing together ideas, and action – and a focus on using methods and technology to promote increased social justice are also important links between all of my research.

Get in touch for copies of anything.

Publications:

2025
Pathways to community safety: What planners can learn from transformative justice movements. Y-Magazine. 18, Fall/Winter. pp11-13.
(co-author with Rachel Fayter and Aditi Mehta)

Liminal and interstitial: Performances of ordinary citizenship in Winnipeg, Canada and Copenhagen, Denmark. Urban Geography. DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2025.2450173

2024
Narrative Mapping and Visual Analysis. DIY Methods, Peterborough, Ontario. Experimental Methods & Media Lab. (September) pp234. DOI: 10.17613/b00b3-cnn88

2023
I am here: Digital context, practices and politics. in Neema Kudva and John Forester (eds) Wrestling with Context. Planning Theory & Practice. 24(4) DOI: 10.1080/14649357.2023.2256185

Green to gold mile: An environmental justice analysis of drought and mitigation policy impacts on home landscapes in Sacramento California. Landscape and Urban Planning. 234: DOI: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2023.104729
(with Camille Altschuld, Arturo Ortiz and Magdalena Aravena)

2022
Multiscalar motivations for immigration politics and policymaking in US cities. Cities. 126. DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2021.103547
(with M. Anne Visser and Laura Daly)

Citizenship. in Patricia Ballamingie and David Szanto (eds) Showing Theory to Know Theory. Ottawa: Showing Theory Press. DOI: 10.22215/stkt/ss31

2020
Planning beyond mass incarceration. Journal of Planning Education and Research. 40(2):130-138.
7/1/2020 Planning beyond Mass Incarceration – Sheryl-Ann Simpson, Justin Steil, Aditi Mehta, DOI: 10.1177/0739456X20915505
(with Justin Steil and Aditi Mehta)

2019
‘Rural sound-space: A restless quiet and an active silence’. In Karolina Doughty, Michelle Duffy, Theresa Harada (eds). Sounding Places: More-Than-Representational Geographies of Sound and Music. pp97-108. Cheltenham: Edward-Elgar Publishing. DOI: 9781788118927/9781788118927.00015

#OurChangingClimate: Building networks of community resilience through social media and design. GeoHumanties. 5(1):1-17, DOI: 10.1080/2373566X.2019.1575761

(with N. Claire Napawan and Brett Snyder)

Understanding Local Government’s Engagement in Immigrant Policy Making in the US. in Harald Bauder and Jonathan Darling (eds) Sanctuary cities and urban struggles: Rescaling migration, citizenship, and rights. DOI:10.7765/9781526134929.00014
(co-author with M. Anne Visser)

2018
Determinants of county migrant regularization policymaking in the United States: Understanding temporal and spatial realities. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X18797134

(co-author with M. Anne Visser)

2017
Spatial patterns of international migrant resident settlement and incorporation in Winnipeg Manitoba. Population, Space and Place. 23(7). DOI: 10.1002/psp.2060

Making Youth Data Matter Curriculum. Davis CA: Center for Regional Change.[download]
(with Nancy Erbstein, Sergio Cuellar, Bidita Tithi, Yohei Kato, Beth Hart and Irvis Orozco)

2015
Prisons, policing and planning: Making the connections visible. Progressive Planning Magazine, Spring.
[Reprinted in Tom Angotti (ed). 2020. Transformative Justice. Montreal: Black Rose Books. pp214-221.]

Negotiating places of incorporation: Comparing the practices of community development organisations in immigration and incorporation. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 4(12):1978-2000. DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2015.1022515

Participation Time. Monu (Magazine of Urbanism) #23 Participatory Urbanism. pp108-113.

2014
New Migrant Cities: An Atlas of Sorts, archived: wheretohere.com/atlas

2010
Using Geographic Information Systems to Compare the Density of Stores Selling Tobacco and Alcohol. Tobacco Control, 19(6):475-480. DOI: 10.1136/tc.2008.029173
(co-author with Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger, Laurie Ross, and William Burdick)

Editorial Works:

Water Justice – Environmental Justice – co-editor with Na’Taki Osborne Jelks and Simone M. Charles (2025)

Planning Beyond Mass Incarceration – Journal of Planning Education and Research – with Justin Steil and Aditi Mehta (2020)

Prisons, Policing and Planning – Progressive Planning Magazine (2015)

Talks:

Planning for Justice in the Borderlands – Columbia GSAPP Event Series: Planning Futures? (2021)

Confronting the Carceral State in Planning – Planners Network Webinar, pp76 (2020)

Planning for Citizenship – University of California, Berkeley. Coll. of Environ. Design (2017)