Michelle Padley has been awarded a Dissertation Completion Fellowship for the 2023-2024 academic year by the UNC Graduate School for her project “Military Pasts, City Futures: The Transition of Brooks, San Antonio, Texas from Military Base to Urban Hub.”
This dissertation examines how urban development policy and military landscapes combine to shape new city futures. Michelle takes a novel approach in this study that integrates cultural and political geography with feminist theory to examine how spatial strategies, legal mechanisms, and discursive practices interact.
The project expands interdisciplinary scholarship on the economic and spatial development of cities, particularly in the US South and Sunbelt. These two regions have been heavily impacted by the military and related industries, yet remain under examined in Urban Studies. Her research findings deepen understanding of how the military impacts gendered and racialized dynamics of urban governance. Work she has completed thus far emphasizes the impact marketing has on cities. This dissertation also enhances recent work in feminist geography on the connections between time and space by highlighting the centrality of temporal politics to urban development.