Clara Irazábal is the Director of the Urban Studies and Planning Program (URSP) in the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (MAPP) at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park. In her research and teaching, she explores the interactions of culture, politics, and placemaking, and their impact on community development and socio-spatial justice in Latin American cities and Latinx, immigrant, and minority communities. She got her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and has two master’s degrees, one from UCB and another from the Central University of Venezuela.
Irazábal has published academic work in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. She is an editorial board member of internationally accredited architectural and planning journals and book presses, including associate editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA). Irazábal has worked as a consultant, researcher, and/or professor in countries of the Americas, Europe, and Asia. She is a lecturer at Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona, where she annually teaches a course in a European Erasmus Mundus program. She has taught award-winning planning and multidisciplinary studios internationally in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Trinidad and Tobago; and domestically in Latinx, Black, and immigrant/refugee communities. Irazábal frequently offers her expertise in local, national, and international media.
