SHEILA FOSTER

Thought Leader. Scholar. Teacher.

BIO

Sheila R. Foster is the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Urban Law and Policy at Georgetown University. She holds a joint appointment with the Georgetown Law School and the McCourt School of Public Policy. Professor Foster’s work focuses on the intersection of law, policy and governance with a specific focus on urban communities and cities. 

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Foster also co-directs LabGov,  an international applied research project that works directly with local governments to craft, implement and evaluate new policies that enable city residents to steward land and other resources within their communities. 

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Foster has been involved on many levels with urban law and policy. She is the chair of the advisory committee for the Global Parliament of Mayors, a leading collaborator with the Georgetown Global Cities Initiative, and a former member of both the Aspen Institute's Urban Innovation Group and the New York City Mayor's Panel on Climate Change.

PUBLICATIONS

Professor Foster’s work focuses on the intersection of law, policy and governance with a specific focus on urban communities and cities. She is one of the leading scholars on environmental and climate justice, most recently recognized by the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law’s 2018 Senior Scholarship Award. Her work analyzes urban governance and the right to the city through the lens of the “commons” as most comprehensively examined in her forthcoming MIT Press Book, Co-Cities ( with Christian Iaione). Her work also focuses on the role of cities in international law and global governance and is exemplified by The Urbanization of Global Governance in The Elgar Research Handbook of International Law and Cities (Janne Nijman and Helmut Aust, eds.) (with Chrystie Swiney)