Ginette Wessel

Ginette Wessel, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Roger Williams University, where she teaches courses in urban design, urban planning, and environmental design research. As an urbanist, designer, and scholar, Ginette has published articles in the Journal of the American Planning Association, New Media & Society, and the Journal of Urban Design, as well as chapters in Food Trucks, Cultural Identity, and Social Justice (MIT Press 2017) and Participatory Urbanisms (UC Berkeley 2015). Her forthcoming book, Mobilizing Food Vending: Gourmet Food Trucks in the American City (Routledge 2024), investigates food trucks’ rights and resiliency in the urban foodscape using ethnography, policy analysis, and spatial interpretation. Her co-authored book Social Media and the Contemporary City (Routledge 2022) explores the interplay of communication technology, social life, and urban development using real-time data analysis. Her research interests include current social and cultural transformations underway in city making—with an emphasis on public space, social equity, and communication technology.
 
In the classroom, Dr. Wessel encourages students to actively apply their knowledge to real-world problems and settings in the community. Her teaching philosophy fosters an understanding of the social inequities in today’s built environment and the pressing concerns of climate change through collaborative problem solving and hands-on experiences. She is an experienced urban designer who has worked with communities throughout her teaching at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, San José State University, and as academic lead of UC Berkeley’s Summer Institute in Urban Planning.
 
Select Publications
 
Wessel, Ginette. Expected 2024. Mobilizing Food Vending: Gourmet Food Trucks in the American City, New York: Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Mobilizing-Food-Vending-Gourmet-Food-Trucks-in-the-American-City/Wessel/p/book/9780367483791 
 
Sauda, Eric, Ginette Wessel, and Alireza Karduni. 2021. Social Media and the Contemporary City, New York: Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Social-Media-and-the-Contemporary-City/Sauda-Wessel-Karduni/p/book/9780367902506
 
Wessel, Ginette. 2017. “Relaxing Regulatory Controls: Vending Advocacy and Rights in Mobile Food Vending.” In From Loncheras to Lobster Love: Food Trucks, Cultural Identity, and Social Justice, edited by Julian Agyeman. Cambridge: MIT Press: https://direct.mit.edu/books/edited-volume/4484/Food-Trucks-Cultural-Identity-and-Social
 
Wessel, Ginette, and Sofia Airghi. 2015. “Negotiating Informality: Operational Strategies of Latino Vendors in San Francisco’s Mission District.” Participatory Urbanisms, Global Urban Humanities Initiative, UC Berkeley: https://www.part-urbs.com/anthology/negotiating_informality.html
 
Wessel, Ginette, Caroline Ziemkiewicz, and Eric Sauda. 2016. “Re-evaluating Urban Space through Tweets: An Analysis of Twitter-based Mobile Food Vendors and Online Communication.” New Media & Society 18 (8): 1636-1656. https://docs.rwu.edu/saahp_fp/50/ 
 
Wessel, Ginette. 2012. “From Place to NonPlace: A Case Study of Social Media and Contemporary Food Trucks.” Journal of Urban Design 17 (4): 511-531. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13574809.2012.706362