Seth Denizen, Princeton Mellon Fellow in Architecture, Urbanism & the Environment

Seth Denizen’s fellowship was sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the High Meadows Environmental Institute.   

Denizen is a researcher and design practitioner trained in landscape architecture and human geography. His published work is multidisciplinary, addressing art and design, microbial ecology, soil science, urban geography, and the politics of climate change. He is currently a member of the editorial board of Scapegoat Journal: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy.

Denizen has taught Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong and University of Virginia. In 2019, he was chosen as the Daniel Urban Kiley Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and in December of that year completed his PhD in Geography at the University of California Berkeley. Denizen's doctoral research investigated the vertical geopolitics of urban soil in Mexico City, where he worked with geologists and soil scientists to characterize the material complexities and political forces that shape the distribution of geological risk in Mexico's urban periphery.

In 2019, Denizen was awarded the SOM Foundation Research Prize with Montserrat Bonvehi and David Moreno Mateos. Their project investigates the metabolic and political-ecological relations between Mexico City and the Mezquital Valley as the largest and longest running wastewater agriculture system in the world.

As a Princeton-Mellon Fellow, Denizen taught a Fall 2021 course, “Thinking Through Soil” based on his ongoing research and forthcoming book manuscript.