Madeeha Yasin Merchant is Pakistani-American architect and design justice advocate, who leads a mission driven practice to build equitable institutions. She is also the founder of Urban Justice League (UJL), a non-profit research think tank exploring the complex dynamics between data, ethics and urban justice. Urban justice encompasses all; social, racial, spatial, economical, climate, ecological and environmental. UJL designs spatial advocacy tools and frameworks that explore justice collaterals, across multiple cities, scales and resolutions. Through the lens of data and ethics, UJL aims to amplify the voices of the marginalized and disenfranchised citizens; enabling them to seek justice for the kind of ‘slow violence’, inflicted upon them, their people and their lands —through institutions of power; global, state or colonial. A systems engineer and design advocate at heart, she builds/re:builds. From just spaces and future imaginaries to frameworks of information architecture that use data to disrupt dominance —challenging power hierarchies in our everyday lives. She was an Associate Research Scholar at Columbia GSAPP and a Tow fellow at Columbia School of Journalism. She received a B.Eng in systems engineering from the UMass - Amherst and an M.Arch from Columbia University. Madeeha is a member of the IEEE, SWE and an Associate AIA. Her work has been published in Volume, Domus, Wired, Abstract, Harvard Design Review and the IEEE Journal and at exhibitions and biennales. She has given talks at the UN, Columbia University, Princeton, MIT Media Lab, RPI, Eyeo Festival, Satellite Summit and NASA. Madeeha also trains as an alpine mountaineer —in dreams to summit K2.
