JANICE PERLMAN is a research scholar, author and public speaker. Her work bridges o field research, social movements, public policy and practice. Her seminal book, The Myth of Marginality (University of California Press, 1976), won the C. Wright Mills Award. In it she contested prevailing negative stereotypes about migrants and shantytowns and discredited favela removal policies. In 2024 it was named #1 of the 5 best books on “the economy as if people mattered.” Her follow-up book, Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge Rio de Janeiro (Oxford University Press) followed the 750 people she interviewed over 40 years and four generations. It won the prestigious PROSE Award in two separate categories. Her most recent article, “’From Demon to Darling: Changing Perceptions of Informal Communities” was presented at the 12th World Urban Forum in Cairo in November 2024. She is the Founder & President of The Mega-Cities Project - a global non-profit whose mission is “to shorten the lag time between ideas and implementation in urban problem-solving. Its teams in the world’s largest cities identify innovative approaches and through the network, share them with cites in similar situations. (see www.megacitiesproject.org) During the pandemic she worked with students, faculty, and community leaders in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to uncover 54 community-based initiatives and co-produced an illustrated booklet of nine case studies to inspire others- “Favelas Combat Covid: The Power of the Peripheries.” After the pandemic she returned to Recife, where, in 1965 ,she had led a joint Brazilian-American student activist project. Among her honors she won a Guggenheim, Award, Fulbright Awards, the Global Citizen Award and the UN Scroll of Honor. She was a tenured Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley and has taught at UC Santa Cruz, NYU, CUNY, Trinity College, the University of Paris and several Brazilian Universities. In the policy arena, she was a senior advisor to the US-Brazil Joint Initiative on Urban Sustainability (JUIS) under President Obama; Scholar in Residence the World Bank; Founding member of ICLEI; Director, Science, Technology and Public Policy at the New York Academy of Sciences, Executive Director of Strategic Planning for the New York City Partnership; and Coordinator of the Inter-Agency Task Force for President Carter ‘s National Urban Policy. She holds a BA in Anthropology from Cornell and a PhD in Political Science and Urban Studies from MIT.
StatementI am a colorist. I started painting in watercolors and went on to use acrylics and oils. I prefer plain air painting--where I feel immersed in the landscape, skyscap, seascape and other scapes. I have been painting since childhood but started to take it seriously in the 1990s while living in a dune shack on the Cape Cod National seashore. I was totally unable to capture what I saw in a photograph. I have taken painting classes and workshops in many places and have shown my work in 2 exhibits at ROCA. Painting has made me look in a new way and see colors, form and motion in a new way. I have travelled around the world and always carry a small watercolor pad, set of paints and brushes. There are times when I get so absorbed in painting that I forget everything else. And when I see the result I can't believe I did it.
CvProfessionally I am a cultural anthropologist working in informal settlements in cities around the globe. I have spent over five decades doing work in Rio de Janeiro and written two books on the marginalized communities called favelas.
I was born and raised in Roslyn, NY; lived in Cambridge, MA.; Santa Cruz, CA; Greenwich Village, NY; and Nyack. I moved from an old Dutch farmhouse on Old Mountain Road in Grandview to my current residence on North Broadway, right on the Hudson River. I keep my Kyack, bike and hiking gear at hand along with my watercolors.
StateNY
CountryU.S.A.
