Bousfield Distinguished Visitors in Planning

Current Bousfield Distinguished Visiting Scholars

Sara Ortiz Escalante, Professor of Practice

Dr. Sara Ortiz Escalante is an urban planner and feminist scholar whose work bridges research, practice, and activism. She is a founding member of Col·lectiu Punt 6, a leading feminist urban planning cooperative based in Barcelona with over two decades of experience advancing gender-transformative approaches to urban design, mobility, and participatory planning across Spain, Latin America, and internationally.

Sara holds a PhD in Planning from the University of British Columbia (2019), where her dissertation, “A Feminist Participatory Action Research with Women Nightshift Workers,” examined the intersections of gender, work, and urban safety. Her research and professional practice focus on mobility justice, urban safety, and participatory methodologies grounded in intersectional feminist perspectives.

Sara has consulted and collaborated internationally across five continents, contributing to policy, planning, and design projects that integrate gender perspectives into urban mobility and spatial justice initiatives. Her publications include Everyday Mobility with a Gender Perspective (CAF & City of Buenos Aires, 2019) and Integrating the Gender Perspective in Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (Barcelona Metropolitan Transport Authority, 2023). As part of Col·lectiu Punt 6, Sara also co-authored Urbanismo Feminista: Por una Transformación Radical de los Espacios de Vida (Virus Editorial, 2019), a landmark book with over 5,000 copies sold across Spain and Latin America, alongside more than ten methodological guides on feminist approaches to urban planning. www.punt6.org @CollectiuPunt6

Norma Rantisi, Professor of Practice

Norma M. Rantisi is Professor of Planning & Geography and former director of Urban Studies/Urban Planning program at Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke / Montreal, Canada. Her current research, with Dr. Deborah Leslie of the University of Toronto, examines work-integration social enterprises in Ontario and Quebec that support migrant women and youth who are excluded from mainstream labour markets. This work explores the pedagogical and social spaces such organizations create to balance economic and social mandates, and navigate the challenges of operating within—while seeking to contest—the neoliberal orientation of the state. It also considers how these organizations leverage solidarity networks (such as social procurement initiatives or links to unions and advocacy organizations) to mitigate these challenges. Norma has also conducted research in Palestine on livelihood initiatives under neoliberal settler colonialism, focusing both on the role of cooperatives and on contemporary forms of community resistance and resilience amid displacement, confinement, and attacks by Israel.

She is currently Co-Chair of Planners Network (PN), an international network that is dedicated to an exchange of ideas and strategies that advance racial, economic and social justice in planning, and part of the managing editorial team of PN's online magazine, Progressive City: Radical Alternatives.  As a Bousfield visitor, she will be co-organizing a PN conference entitled 'Planning in the Face of Fascism' that will take place May 8-10, 2026 at the University of Toronto.

About the Visitorship

The John Bousfield Distinguished Visitor in Planning was established through a major donation and a matching grant by the University of Toronto. The Visitorship honours John Bousfield (1929-2016), a distinguished Canadian Urban Planner, with more than six decades of professional practice, and enables the Department of Geography & Planning to bring to the University accomplished individuals who can teach, give public lectures and participate in collaborative research projects on issues important to the field of planning.

The Bousfield Visitorship is intended to offer distinguished planning academics and practitioners the opportunity for research, writing and reflection, while also enhancing the learning experience of graduate students in the Program in Planning, providing diverse and innovative perspectives on contemporary planning issues and enhancing the relations between the Planning Program and the community at large.

Located in one of the most diverse cities in North America, the Planning Program offers its students a dynamic, interdisciplinary blend of practical knowledge and critically engaged theory. More information on the Program in Planning webpage.

Eligibility, Expectations and How to Apply

Past Bousfield Visitors