Celia is a Ph.D. candidate in Harvard’s Department of Government studying political theory. Her research examines the intersections between urban design, political change, and democratic citizenship. Her dissertation investigates the history and contestation of urban planning as a tool for management of social life. Examining the discipline of urban planning alongside artistic and activist movements, she analyzes how these different paradigms offer alternative conceptualizations of the built environment’s political power. Her work asks how their spatial theories articulate different normative questions about the knowledges, agency, and responsibilities of both designers and citizens. As part of a broader interest in political imaginaries, her research interests also include utopia, ideology, and social movements. Through this latter interest, she co-convened the 2020 Ethics and Practice of Dissent Symposium. Before Harvard, Celia studied political science at the University of Chicago, and taught middle school English courses in France. At Harvard, she has worked as a curriculum lead at the Democratic Knowledge Project at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics, and as a Media and Design Fellow at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. Her writing has been published in Jacobin and KINO!. She is also a proud co-founder of the Government Department Fiction Book Club, now in its sixth year. During the 2023-2024 academic year, Celia is a Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies Graduate Fellow, and a Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative Doctoral Fellow. 

 

As a Harvard Teaching Fellow, Celia has taught undergraduate courses in Political Theory, History & Philosophy, American Politics, and Comparative Politics. These courses include: 

Hegel and Marx, with Peter Gordon
Res Publica: A History of Representative Government, with Dan Carpenter
French Social Thought: From Durkheim to Foucault, with Peter Gordon
Introduction to Comparative Politics, with Steve Levitsky
Foundations of Political Theory, with Eric Beerbohm

Celia has proudly advised an undergraduate thesis for a joint concentration in Government and Classics, and is a Concentration Advisor for dozens of undergraduate students in the Government Department. She also convenes a reading group on 20th century political philosophy.