Lily Song

Lily Song is an Assistant Professor of Race, Social Justice, and the Built Environment at Northeastern University, affiliated with the College of Social Sciences and Humanities and the College of Arts, Media, and Design. She previously served as a Lecturer at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and founding coordinator of Harvard CoDesign. Song holds a PhD from MIT, an MA from UCLA, and a BA from UC Berkeley.

Her research bridges race, gender, and class politics with urban planning, emphasizing reparative design, infrastructure mobilizations, and decolonizing practices. Key projects include collaboration with ACT-LA’s 'Metro as Sanctuary' campaign, advocating for equitable transit safety policies in Los Angeles, and co-developing the 'sistering' methodology to center community-led activism in design.

Publications span anti-racist urbanism, gendered space dynamics, and global infrastructure challenges. Her work prioritizes partnership with grassroots organizations to ensure policies reflect marginalized communities’ needs.

Notable collaborations include the Veterans Legal Clinic at UCLA and Howard University’s Movement Lawyering Clinic. Song’s educational philosophy integrates design justice into pedagogy, as seen in her Anti-Displacement Studio and Black Belt South initiatives.

Labs/Teams: CoDesign (Harvard), Northeastern’s Reparative Planning Initiative, ACT-LA partnership network.