About

Naomi Adiv is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in Political Science at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where she teaches about urban politics and policy, and public space. Her research interests include public bathing, public space, the social relations of state infrastructure, and the idea of community. She is also a member of the editorial board of the online urbanist journal, Metropolitics.

Naomi has taught university courses since 2009, in courses from two to two hundred students. She served as Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University (2014 – 2018), where she was also co-director of the Graduate Certificate in Urban Design, in partnership with the school of architecture. She was also Assistant Professor in Geography and Planning (CLTA/Visiting) at the University of Toronto (2018 – 2020). While in New York City for graduate school, she taught in the Urban Studies and Geography departments at Hunter College, Queens College (including the Macaulay Honors College) and the Fashion Institute of Technology in the program on Sustainable Interior Environments.

Dr. Adiv holds a Ph.D. in Earth and Environmental Sciences in the Geography program at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. Her dissertation, The Amphibious Public: A historical geography of municipal swimming and bathing, New York City, 1870 – 2013, was based in ethnographic and archival research on public swimming pools and bathhouses in New York. She also holds an MS in Community Development from UC-Davis and a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies from UC-Berkeley.

Her focus on writing has led her to earn a certificate from the nonfiction program at the CUNY Writer’s Institute (2012). She was also selected to participate in the Tin House Writer’s Workshop for poetry in Portland, Oregon (2016) and the Toronto Workshop in Public Writing in the Humanities at the Jackman Humanities Insititute, University of Toronto (2023).

Prior to graduate school, Naomi worked largely in youth development through summer camps and after-school programs; her academic work owes a great deal to what she learned in those settings.