BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

jah elyse sayers

Email: [email protected]

DEGREES

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), April 2026

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”

Committee: 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

EMPLOYMENT

Current employment

2024-present Research Associate | Place, Memory & Culture Incubator | Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, CUNY

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

American Association of Geographers

Landscape Research Group

National Women’s Studies Association

SCHOLARSHIPS, FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS

2026 Carolyn G. Heilbrun Dissertation Prize, Center for the Study of Women and Society

2025-2026 Dissertation Fellow, Marilyn J. Gittell Dissertation Fellowship in Urban Policy

2025-2026 Graduate Fellow, Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean

2025 Summer Public Research Fellow, Public Scholarship Practice Space, Center for the Humanities, CUNY

2024-2025 Graduate Fellow, Center for Place, Culture, and Politics

2024-2025 Graduate Fellow, Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean, CUNY

2024 Awardee, Paul C. Notari Environmental Studies Grant, Futures Initiative, CUNY

2023-2024 Actionist Fellow, Social Practice CUNY

2022 Research Fellow, Connect New York, Early Research Initiative, CUNY

2022 Awardee, The Restorative City Mini-grant, Design Trust for Public Space

2020 Public Research Fellow, PublicsLab, CUNY

2018 Awardee, Graduate Pipeline Summer Research Award, The Office of Educational Opportunity and Diversity, CUNY

RESEARCH & TEACHING

2025 Adjunct Lecturer, Social Justice & the Built Environment, Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York

2024-2025 Research partner, Queer Landscape Stewardship, University of Toronto [with Ahmed Allahwalla]

2022-2025 Guest lecturer [recurring], Environmental Psychology, Pratt Institute

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

2012 Research assistant, Cultural preservation of Isle de Jean Charles, Columbia University Students for Human Rights contracted by the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe

PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

2025 “Archiving 101” [workshop], Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute

2025 “Erosion at Riis” [zine], self-published with Riis Beach Bloc Association

2025 “Parking Lot Towing & Surveillance at Riis” [zine], self-published with Riis Beach Bloc Association

2025 “An Evolving Guide to Safety and Solidarity on The Peoples’ Beach” [zine], self-published with Riis Beach Bloc Association

2025 “At the Shoreline” [walking tour], 🝝aggot 🝗arth [series], curated by KL Mays

2024 We Come in Waves: an Oral History Guide for Queer Riis [zine], self-published with People’s Riisearch Group

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

2023 Initiator, People’s Riisearch Group [ongoing]

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

REFEREED 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.

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).

SELECTED WRITING

2026 Sayers, Jah Elyse. Review of Care at the End of the World: Dreaming of Infrastructure in Crip-of-Color Writing. Women’s Studies Quarterly 53: 3 & 4.

2025 Sayers, Jah Elyse. Review of How the Earth Feels: Geological Fantasy in the Nineteenth-Century United States. Women’s Studies Quarterly 53: 1 & 2: 237-242.

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. “to be unmade, to be unfinished, to only ever be-with.” BRIClab Essays. May 6. 

PANELS & PRESENTATIONS

2026 [forthcoming] Roundtable: “Iterations of place-based research and place-based advocacy at queer Riis,” CLAGS Queer Class Relations Conference, CUNY

2025 Invited panelist, “Critically Black Dialogue: Decolonizing the Archives,” Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute.

2025 Invited workshop, “At the Shoreline,” 🝝aggot 🝗arth [series], curated by KL Mays.

2025 Invited presentation, “Participatory Action Research towards a People’s Infrastructure,” NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene.

2025 Paper presentation, “Building research capacity to preserve queer urban shorelines: Notes from New York City and Toronto,” Annual Meeting, American Association of Geographers.

2023 Invited panelist, “What is Queer Space?,” Civic Leadership Program, American Institute of Architects: New York Chapter, New York, NY, October 19, 2023.

2023 Paper presentation, “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 Invited workshop, “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 Invited panelist, “SPARK :: On Stonewall,” Athena Center, Barnard College, New York, NY, October 6, 2022.

2022 Invited presentation, “Reimagining Riis Beach: Queer histories, urban planning, and opportunities at Riis,” Riis Beach Town Hall, GLITS, Inc., Queens, NY, April 2022.

2022 Paper presentation, “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 Panelist, “Reworking the ‘empty spots’: Attending to the mess of everyday life,” American Association of Geographers annual meeting, February 2022.

2019 Paper presentation, “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 Paper presentation, “Outside of the Everyday Outside: Queer placemaking at Riis Beach,” Pipeline Research Conference, 2018.

2018 Paper presentation, “Out of the closet, onto the beach: Riis Beach as an alternative to NYC Pride,” 50 Years of Environmental Psychology, CUNY Graduate Center, 2018.

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

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

2023-2025 Managing Editor, Women’s Studies Quarterly

2022-2025 Copyeditor [contractor], Ideas on Fire, LLC

2016-2017 Equitable Public Space Fellow, Design Trust for Public Space

2015-2016 Editing Assistant + Development & Communications Manager, New Village Press

2014-2015 Development & Communications Assistant, New Village Press

SERVICE

2025 Initiator, Riis Beach Bloc Association

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

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]

INSTALLATION & PERFORMANCE ART

2025 “Morphology” [group show], May-June 2025, Forest for Trees, Governor’s Island, NYC.

2022-2024 Oral Futures Booth [public art installation pilot], 2022-2024, Bay 1, People’s Beach, Jacob Riis Park, Queens, NY.

2023 something soft [performance], 2023, Cannonball Festival, Philadelphia, PA, and something soft [workshops and performance series], 2024, Painted Bride, Philadelphia, PA.

2022 Vivarium, suspended [installation], 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.