Jess Myers has been selected as the recipient of the 2025 SAH | Places | Graham Foundation Prize on Race and the Built Environment. The award supports the production of a major work of public scholarship that considers the history of race and the built environment through a contemporary lens. Myers' project, Disciplining Sound: The Universal Ear Listens to New York’s Public Infrastructure, will be published in Places Journal and presented in a public lecture at the Graham Foundation in fall 2026. Myers’ essay will focus on “the spatial politics of urban listening,” in particular on an audiosocial analysis of two traumatic recent events in New York City: the killings of Jordan Neely, in the subway, and Akai Gurley, in a public housing stairwell. In each case, the sounds in question—screams in a subway car; a door opening in a stairwell—emerged as pivotal evidence in the courtroom trials that followed. Blending sound studies, geography, and urbanism, Myers will examine racialized urban infrastructures and public expectations for safety, as well as what have been considered reasonable reactions to breaches of such expectations.

Jess Myers is an urbanist and assistant professor of architecture at Syracuse University whose practice includes work as an editor, writer, podcaster, and curator. In the past, Myers has worked in diverse roles—archivist, analyst, teacher—within cultural practices that include Bernard Tschumi Architects, the Service Employees International Union, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Rhode Island School for Design. Her personal interests and research engage multimedia platforms to explore politics and residency in urban conditions. Her podcast Here There Be Dragons takes an in-depth look at the impact of security narratives on urban planning through the eyes of city residents. Her writing can be found in Urban Omnibus, The Architect’s Newspaper, Log, l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, The Avery Review, Places, Dwell, and The Funambulist magazine. Her 2022 exhibition, A Pause Is Not A Break, was on “view” in Providence, Rhode Island; Ames, Iowa; and Ottawa, Canada.

The SAH | Places | Graham Foundation Prize aims to develop an inclusive academic culture that promotes the dissemination of pioneering research produced by both new entrants and senior scholars in the field. The goals of the award are threefold: to create a platform for existing and new scholarship in the field; to reach new publics for this work; and to develop mentorships and networking opportunities for graduate students and junior scholar. The prize, initially called the SAH | Places Prize, was envisioned by architectural historian Charles L. Davis, II, who cofounded the SAH Race + Architectural History Affiliate Group in 2019 to promote research activities that analyze the racial discourses of architectural history, past and present. The group’s activities promote a race-conscious architectural history that analyzes the constitutive role of race thinking in the social construction and representation of cultural differences.

Founded at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Berkeley in 1983, Places is an independent, nonprofit journal of public scholarship on architecture, landscape, and urbanism. Bridging from the university to the profession to the public, Places features scholars, journalists, designers, and artists who are responding to the profound challenges of our time: environmental health and structural inequity, climate crisis, resource scarcity, human migration, rapid technological innovation, and the erosion of the public sphere.

Founded in 1940, the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) is an international nonprofit membership organization that promotes the study, interpretation and conservation of architecture, design, landscapes and urbanism worldwide. SAH serves a network of local, national and international institutions and individuals who, by profession or interest, focus on the built environment and its role in shaping contemporary life. SAH promotes meaningful public engagement with the history of the built environment through advocacy efforts, print and online publications, and local, national and international programs.