Marie-Alice L'Heureux

Dr. L'Heureux' research is focused around the concept that the built environment (the sum total of all human-made places from the national down to the home)—and the cultural landscape (the complex interaction between people and the natural environments) are created over time and embody the values of the society that created them and also help shape those values. Infrastructural investment is also rarely democratically arrayed—not everyone gets to contribute equally to its form—rulers and elites make more decisions than individual people or groups, yet individuals are far from powerless. Working from this premise she studies: what is built, in what way, and by whom; the way that meanings are ascribed to places; and the impact when multiple meanings come into conflict. Prior to teaching in a professional school her research was focused on the Republic of Estonia within the larger context of the Soviet and post-Soviet realm, including Eastern Europe. Since coming to the University of Kansas, she has broadened her research to include equity in infrastructural investment especially around issues of race and sustainability. She is asking the same questions but using different lenses (including discrimination, race, and poverty) to understand the American cultural landscape within a broader historical context. She is also continuing her research on the Baltic States, former Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe. Her recent publications include: "The Twentieth-Century City: Socialist, Capitalist, Modern," 2015; "The Creative Class, Urban Boosters, and Race: Shaping Urban Revitalization in Kansas City, Missouri." Journal of Urban History (2015) and "Infrastructure, Social Injustice, and the City—Parsing the Wisdom of Jane Jacobs," 2012, in The Wisdom of Jane Jacobs", Eds. Sonia Hirt with Diane Zahm. In 2015 she started research on Presidential Libraries and Museums with her colleague, Kapila Silva.