Francesca Ammon is an assistant professor in the City and Regional Planning and Historic Preservation departments at the University of Pennsylvania. An urban historian, she focuses on changes to the built environment over time. Recently, her work has centered around the urban renewal period in the mid-twentieth century. Background and education Ammon began her studies in the fields of engineering and design, earning a B.S.E. in civil engineering from Princeton University and a Master of Environmental Design from Yale School of Architecture. She then went on to study history and American studies, earning a Master of Arts in history and a Master of Philosophy and Ph.D. in American studies, all from Yale. Career Prior to joining the faculty at Penn, Ammon was a visiting scholar at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She also held a number of fellowships, beginning while she was completing her PhD as a Whiting Fellow in the Humanities, Ambrose Monell Foundation Fellow in Technology and Democracy at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, and John E. Rovensky Fellow with the Business History Conference. More recently, she held the Sally Kress Tompkins Fellowship, which is jointly sponsored by the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) and the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS). As a professor at Penn, she teaches a variety of courses in city planning and historic preservation. The courses range from introductory courses on planning history and historical documentation to leading advanced research courses to electives examining cities and sound and photography and the city. Ammon's involvement in her field extends beyond the classroom. She is an associated faculty member of the History Department and a member of the Gender Sexuality and Women's Studies (GSWS) Executive Board. She is a colloquium member of the Penn/Mellon Foundation Humanities + Urbanism + Design Initiative and a Faculty Fellow of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. Beyond Penn, she was an Andrew W. Mellon DH Fellow at the Price Lab for Digital Humanities, and from 2016 to 2017, she was a Mellon Researcher with the Canadian Centre for Architecture's "Architecture and/for Photography" initiative. Finally, Ammon serves on the board of the Society for American City & Regional Planning History (SACRPH). Research Ammon's research focuses on urban planning and the built environment since World War II, studying the changing landscape to reveal social, political, cultural, and economic patterns. Her work not only explores urban revitalization efforts in the