PEOPLE

Jocelyn Poe, AICP

Jocelyn Poe, AICP and Ph.D. candidate, leads the SaHA Planning Studio. Before attending graduate school, she was the lead planner for Duvall Decker Architects, P. A., where she led intensive, research-based planning projects throughout Mississippi. In her work, she develops innovative solutions to complex problems in ways that seek to improve communities’ environmental, economic, cultural, and social well-being.

Inspired by her experience in practice, Jocelyn’s academic work conceptualizes communal trauma as a place-based phenomenon impacting communities’ ability to achieve well-being. Her doctoral work explores how communal trauma and land histories impact people’s interactions with planners, planning, and policymakers. Moreover, these histories profoundly impact how communities experience and access healthy growth and communal wellness.  

Realizing that the planning field needed a space where the complexities of community hurt could be more holistically examined, Jocelyn started SaHA Planning Studio. This studio space aspires to impact lived experiences and produce healthy places through the collective exploration of reparative praxis, which integrates critical theories with liberating practices. She hopes to lead the planning field in defining a more ethical approach to planning that centers on community care and thrives on community agency.