Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), in process
Environmental psychology Earth & environmental sciences | The Graduate Center, CUNY, in process
Master of Philosophy (MPhil), 2022
Environmental psychology | The Graduate Center, CUNY
Master of Arts (MA), 2020
Environmental psychology | The Graduate Center, CUNY
Thesis Title: “Black Queer Times at Riis: Making Place in a Queer Afrofuturist Tense” | Advisors: Cindi Katz, María Elena Torre, Caitlin Cahill
Bachelor of Arts (BA), 2015
Urban studies | Columbia University
Thesis Title: “‘And That’s What Keeps Them All Coming’: An Ethnographic Case Study of Spatial Contestation and Queer Resilience on Pier 45” | Supervisor: Meredith Linn
CURRENT EMPLOYMENT
Adjunct Lecturer | Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York
Research Associate | Place, Memory & Culture Incubator | Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, CUNY
Editorial Assistant | Women’s Studies Quarterly
SCHOLARSHIPS
Dissertation Fellow, Marilyn J. Gittell Dissertation Fellowship in Urban Policy, 2025-2026
Dissertation Fellow, Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean, 2025-2026
Summer Public Research Fellow, Public Scholarship Practice Space, 2025
Dissertation Fellow, Center for Place, Culture, and Politics, 2024-2025
Dissertation Fellow, Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean, 2024-2025
Awardee, Paul C. Notari Environmental Studies Grant, Futures Initiative, 2024
Actionist Fellow, Social Practice CUNY, 2023-2024
Research Fellow, Connect New York, Early Research Initiative, 2022
Awardee, The Restorative City Mini-grant, Design Trust for Public Space, 2022
Public Research Fellow, PublicsLab, 2020
Awardee, Graduate Pipeline Summer Research Award, The Graduate Center, CUNY, 2018
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Association of Geographers
Landscape Research Group
National Women’s Studies Association
RESEARCH & TEACHING
2025, Adjunct Instructor, Social Justice & The Built Environment, Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York
2022-2024 Adjunct Instructor, Introduction to Civic Engagement, Drexel University
2022-2023 Participatory Action Research Fellow, People’s Beach Historic Landmarking, Radical Imagination for Racial Justice
2021-2022 Research and accessibility consultant, Disability Justice Community Landscape Mapping Project, Disability Frontlines Fund, Third Wave Fund
2021 Research assistant, Understanding the Impacts of Urban Agriculture on Health, Spirituality, and Collective Agency in Philadelphia, PI: Ashley Gripper, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
2018-2019 Participatory action researcher / facilitator, NYC Unity Project, NYC Mayor’s Office & Public Science Project
2013-2016 Research and production assistant, Pier Kids: The Life [documentary film], Director: Elegance Bratton
2015 Teaching assistant, Digital Restructuring of Cities (taught by Leah Meisterlin), Urban Studies, Barnard College
2014 Research assistant, Mapping banking deserts and financial access, Special Project Office, Director of Research: Leah Meisterlin
PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
2024 Workshop design & facilitation, “Foraging the Altar: Play Practices”, Painted Bride Art Center
2024 Workshop design & facilitation, “all that you touch”: a collective self and material study, Painted Bride Art Center
2021 Harvest and culinary instructor, Youth Internship Program, Sankofa Community Farm
2017-2020 Facilitator, “Daring to be Powerful” I & II; Outsiderz Series, Audre Lorde Project
2019 Workshop design & facilitator, “Queer Afrofuturism and QTPOC Placemaking”, With You For You (WYFY) summer school, By Us For Us (BUFU) collective and The School for Poetic Computation
2018 Facilitator, “They, Who?: Worldmaking with Gender”, BLM in our Schools
SELECT PUBLICATIONS
2022 Chavez-Norgaard, Stefan, Leah Montange, Jah Elyse Sayers, and Megan Ybarra. “Introduction: Making Abolition Through One Million Experiments.” Society + Space Magazine. October 31.
2022 Sayers, Jah Elyse. “Placemaking When ‘Freedom is a Place’: Tracing Liberatory Infrastructures from Queer Riis Beach.” Deem Journal 4: 100-106.
2021 Sayers, Jah Elyse. “Black Queer Times at Riis: Making Place in a Queer Afrofuturist Tense,” Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies 22 (1).
2021 Sayers, Jah Elyse. “to be unmade, to be unfinished, to only ever be-with.” BRIClab Essays. May 6.
PANELS & PRESENTATIONS
2025 “Building research capacity to preserve queer urban shorelines: Notes from New York City and Toronto” [paper presentation], Annual Meeting, American Association of Geographers.
2023 “What is Queer Space?” [panel], Civic Leadership Program, American Institute of Architects: New York Chapter, New York, NY, October 19, 2023.
2023 “Bending historic preservation toward Black queer and trans futures(?),” Black Futures [panel], Black Geographies Graduate Student Conference, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, March 17-18, 2023.
2023 “Audre Lorde’s legacies in place: Embodying erotic potentials of placemaking through Black queer Riis Beach,” Intercultural Resource Center, Columbia University, New York, NY, February 15, 2023.
2022 “SPARK :: On Stonewall” [panel], Athena Center, Barnard College, New York, NY, October 6, 2022.
2022 “Reimagining Riis Beach: Queer histories, urban planning, and opportunities at Riis,” Riis Beach Town Hall, GLITS, Inc., Queens, NY, April 2022.
2022 “Black Queer Times at Riis,” racialization.spectacle.liberation: feminist ruminations on placemaking, memory, and the non-human [panel], Sociologists for Women in Society winter meeting, March 2022.
2022 “Reworking the ‘empty spots’: Attending to the mess of everyday life” [panel], American Association of Geographers annual meeting, February 2022.
2019 “Queer Afrofuturism in Place: Dirt, Matter, and Mattering in Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer,” Afrofutures of Gender, Sexuality, Disability and Education [panel], Race and Its Futures: Teach, Research, Imagine, Futures Initiative, 2019.
2018 “Outside of the Everyday Outside: Queer placemaking at Riis Beach,” Pipeline Research Conference, 2018.
2018 “Out of the closet, onto the beach: Riis Beach as an alternative to NYC Pride,” 50 Years of Environmental Psychology, CUNY Graduate Center, 2018.
INSTALLATION & PERFORMANCE ART
2022 Oral Futures Booth [public art installation pilot], 2022-ongoing, Bay 1, People’s Beach, Jacob Riis Park, Queens, NY.
2023 something soft [performance], 2023, Cannonball Festival, Philadelphia, PA, and something soft [residency, workshop, and performance series], 2024, Painted Bride, Philadelphia, PA.
2022 Vivarium, suspended , November-December 2022, Trophallaxis Study Group [group show], curated by Jonathan Gonzalez, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA.
2019 Zero Rest Mass [performance], 2019, Brooklyn Arts Exchange; Brooklyn, NY.
2019 Waste Time [sculpture installation], 2019, MetaDen, Brooklyn, NY.
PREVIOUS EMPLOYMENT
2022-2024 Copyeditor, Ideas on Fire, LLC
2016-2017 Equitable public space fellow, Design Trust for Public Space
2014-2016 Editing assistant; Development & communications manager, New Village Press
SERVICE
2022-2024 Member-worker, Home Build Collective, Black Visioning Group, Philadelphia, PA
2017-2024 Board of directors, New Village Press
2017-2020 Organizing and coordinating committee, Audre Lorde Project
PEER REVIEW
2024 Theory, Research, and Action in Urban Education
2023 GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies
2023 Antipode: A Journal of Radical Geography
EXTRA-ACADEMIC TRAINING
2023 “Embodied Storytelling,” Shavon Norris.
2020 “Somatics, Trauma, and Resilience: Healing in Our Times” intensive course, Strozzi Institute.
2019 BIPOC FIRE farming immersion program, Soul Fire Farm.
2018 “TransJustice Community School” community organizing intensive, Audre Lorde Project.
2015 “Narrating Population Health: Oral History, Disparity, and Social Change” institute, Columbia University Center for Oral History Research Summer Institute.
ARTISTIC RESIDENCIES
2024 Painted Bride Art Center. [Performance]
2020 “Moving with Pause,” Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature, and Dance. [Interdisciplinary]
2019 “Needing It,” Brooklyn Arts Exchange. [Performance]
