Eric Robsky Huntley

Eric Robsky Huntley is a Lecturer in Urban Science and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and a 2020-2021 Fellow of the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC).

Huntley is a GIScientist, geographer, and designer who builds mapping tools in collaboration with and alongside movements for social justice. They received an Antipode Foundation Scholar-Activist Grant in collaboration with Graphe, the Toronto-based Mining Injustice Solidarity Network, and Beyond Extraction to design citizen science workshops investigating the economic geography of the Canadian extractive industries. They are also engaged in an ongoing project with Mutual Aid Medford and Somerville to develop applications to support tenant organizing in Greater Boston. In addition to mapping work, they examine histories of cities and science using methods drawn from the digital humanities and spatial history. With the support of a fellowship from  NERFC, they are working with partners from libraries and historical Societies in New England to archive and extract features from historical planning documents.

A dedicated teacher, they were a 2018 recipient of the Teaching with Digital Technologies Award from MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor. They teach courses centered on GIS, spatial database design, spatial statistics, web mapping, and history and theory. They also direct DUSPviz, a departmental initiative to teach and situate new approaches for mapping, visualizing, and imagining our cities. Outside of DUSP, they serve as an advisor on an initiative of the Leventhal Maps & Education Center at the Boston Public Library that is developing K-12 teaching materials with educators using human-centered interfaces for historical maps.

Their research has been published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers and the American Journal of Epidemiology. Their design work has been exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Museum of Design (a project with Sarah Williams's Civic Data Design Lab), the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan.

They hold a PhD in Geography from the University of Kentucky, a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Performing Arts Technology, with a concentration in Media Arts and Engineering. They are also co-director of Graphe, a collective of critical scholars, practitioners, and teachers who understand maps as interventions in support of movements for justice.