Michael Dear is Professor Emeritus in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, and Honorary Professor in the Bartlett School of Planning at University College, London. His graduate education was at University College London and the University of Pennsylvania. Before coming to Berkeley in 2009, he worked for two decades at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Michael was the founding editor of the scholarly journal Society and Space: Environment & Planning D, and is a leading exponent of the Los Angeles School of Urbanism. His monograph, ‘The Postmodern Urban Condition’, was chosen by CHOICE magazine as an “Outstanding Academic Title” of 2000.
His latest book, Why Walls Won’t Work: Repairing the US-Mexico Divide was awarded the Globe Prize for ‘Geography in the Public Interest’ from the American Association of Geographers. His recent edited volume, entitled Geohumanties: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place focused on emerging transdisciplinary intersections among geography, environmental design and the humanities.
He recently curated an exhibition entitled ‘Califas: Art of the California-Mexico Border’ at the Richmond Center for the Arts. He is a frequent contributor to exhibition catalogues for such major institutions as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and is the author/editor of fifteen books and many scholarly essays. His work has been translated into several languages, and he has lectured in over twenty countries on four continents. He has written widely for non-academic publications, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic en Español, the Huffington Post, and Politico Magazine.
Michael has been a Guggenheim Fellowship holder, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a Fulbright Specialist, and Fellow at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy. He has received the highest honors for creativity and excellence in research, and numerous undergraduate and graduate teaching and mentorship awards. In 2014, he was elected Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (his country of birth), and in 2019 was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from McMaster University in Canada.
He has engaged in professional practice in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the US, including (most recently) the preparation of amicus briefs relating to US-Mexico border issues on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union before the US Supreme Court.