Sara Safransky is a writer and human geographer. Her scholarship and teaching focus on the intersection of urban politics, race and the racialization of space, property, urban sustainability, social movements, and engaged scholarship. She has a background in city and regional planning and community-based documentary filmmaking.

Safransky is the author of The City After Property, recently published by Duke University Press. She is the co-editor of A People’s Atlas of Detroit and co-producer of its sister documentary, A People’s Story of Detroit. Her writing has appeared in Antipode, the Annals of Association of American Geographers, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, among other journals.

Safransky’s scholarship has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies, among other funders.

Safransky is currently an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University in the Department of Human and Organizational Development. Before joining the faculty, Safransky earned her doctorate in human geography from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. While at UNC, Safransky trained at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. She completed undergraduate degrees in public health and photojournalism from Hampshire College.