Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment

Michael A Cohen

Professor of International Affairs & Director of the Doctoral Program in Public and Urban Policy

Contact: cohenm2@newschool.edu

Michael Cohen (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Director of the PhD in Public and Urban Policy program at the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment, and professor of international affairs at the Julien J. Studley Graduate Programs in International Affairs. Before coming to The New School in 2001, he was a Visiting Fellow of the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University. From 1972 to 1999, he had a distinguished career at the World Bank. He was responsible for much of the urban policy development of the Bank over that period and, from 1994-1998, he served as the Senior Advisor to the Bank’s Vice-President for Environmentally Sustainable Development. He has worked in over fifty countries and was heavily involved in the Bank’s work on infrastructure, environment, and sustainable development. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Panel on Urban Dynamics. He is the author or editor of several books, including most recently Infrastructure Policy and Inequality (Routledge, 2024), Preparing the Urban Future: Global Pressures and Local Forces (ed. with A. Garland, B. Ruble, and J. Tulchin), The Human Face of the Urban Environment (ed. with I. Serageldin), Urban Policy and Economic Development: An Agenda for the 1990s, Argentina’s Economic Growth and Recovery: The Economy in a Time of Default (Routledge, 2012) and an edited volume, The Global Economic Crisis in Latin America: Impacts and Response, (Routledge, 2012). Other publications include articles in 25 Years of Urban Development (Amersfoort, The Netherlands, 1998), Cities Fit for People (Kirdar, ed., 1996), The Brookings Review, Journal of the Society for the Study of Traditional Environments, International Social Science Review, Habitat International, and Finance and Development. He has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, The Johns Hopkins University, and the School of Architecture, Design, and Urban Planning of the University of Buenos Aires.

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr

Professor of International Affairs

Contact: fukudaps@newschool.edu

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr is a Professor of International Affairs at The New School. Her teaching and research have focused on human rights and development, global health, and global goal setting and governance by indicators. From 1995 to 2004, she was lead author and director of the UNDP Human Development Reports. Her recent publications include: Millennium Development Goals: Ideas, Interests and Influence (Routledge 2017); Fulfilling Social and Economic Rights (with T. Lawson-Remer and S. Randolph, Oxford 2015), winner of the American Political Science Association’s 2016 Best Book in Human Rights Scholarship and the 2019 Grawemeyer Prize for Ideas to Improve the World Order. Fukuda-Parr contributes actively to international policy and research processes. She is Chair of the UN Committee on Development Policy,Chair of the Boards of Knowledge Ecology International, Co-Director of the Collective on the Political Determinants of Health at the University of Oslo, and Distinguished Fellow at the JICA Research Institute, Tokyo.

Leah Braithwaite

Professor of Urban Policy
Graduate Admission Counselor

Contact: howell@newschool.edu

David R. Howell is a professor of economics and public policy at the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment. He is an affiliated member of the New School’s economics department, a Faculty Research Fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (The New School), and a Research Scholar at the Political Economy Research Institute (U-Mass Amherst). His research focuses on social policy and labor market outcomes.

Sam Byron

Professor of Architecture and Urbanism
Assistant Director of Admission, College of Performing Arts

Contact: traganog@newschool.edu

Jilly Traganou is Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Parsons School of Design, and affiliated faculty with the Department of Politics, and the Doctorate in Public and Urban Policy at the New School. Her current work examines urban and material practices related to social movements with a focus on prefigurative politics, as well as intersections between policy and design. She is the author of two monographs (Designing the Olympics; The Tokaido Road), editor of three anthologies (Design, Displacement, Migration; Design and Political Dissent; Travel, Space, Architecture), and guest-editor of six special issues for peer-reviewed journals on subjects of infrastructure, megaevents, migration, and social movements. She has received the 2016 Design Incubation Scholarship award for graphic design history for her book Designing the Olympics and film “Mexico 1968: Visual Identity.” She has been a fellow of the Fulbright, Japan Foundation, GIDEST, the European Union Science and Technology Post-doctorate Program in Japan, Bard Graduate Center, and Princeton Program in Hellenic Studies, and a recipient of grants by Graham Foundation, Zolberg Institute for Migration Studies, and Design History Society. In the last five years, she has been (co)editor-in-chief of Design and Culture, a seminal journal in the field of design studies.

Lynn Ayoub

Editing Coordinator

Contact: ayoul620@newschool.edu

Lynn Ayoub is a researcher and PhD student at The New School, specializing in Public and Urban Policy with a focus on the politics of infrastructure in post-car urban centers. After completing her undergraduate studies in Law and Political Sciences at the Lebanese University, she joined The New School for a master’s in Public and Urban Policy as a Fulbright scholar. Lynn’s previous work focused on transportation and the revival of the railway system in Lebanon post-civil war. Her current research explores how infrastructure influences, and is influenced by, the broader socio-political landscape.

Monte Ritz

Content Manager

Contact: ritzm860@newschool.edu

Monte Ritz is a strategic communications leader and PhD student at the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment at The New School, where he focuses on the intersection of narrative framing, visual storytelling, and public policy. With over 20 years of experience creating content and communication strategies for national and multinational campaigns, Monte’s current research explores how narrative framing and visual storytelling shape public discourse and impact policy outcomes, particularly on key policy issues in the US culture wars.