Tara Bissett is a researcher, educator, and scholar of the built environment. Tara’s research explores the history of women who have shaped spatial counter practices inside and outside of the home. Tara is interested in the ways that “home” inflects non-homelike spaces, especially practices that lead us to question where home ends and the institution begins: shelters, day cares, age homes, reformatories. Her most recent research traces the history of women’s housing collectives between 1500 to 1950 that have emerged due to exclusionary laws and practices. The work explores communality as a condition shaped by unruly practices and traces the fraught terrain that merges the home, shelter, and penitentiary.
Tara is passionate about disability justice and works to advance pedagogical methods for disability inclusion. Tara has co-taught a studio on disability inclusion called Designing for Every Body and another that foregrounded community engagement with children, The Child in the City. Tara also teaches Cultural History courses. As a thesis supervisor, Tara welcomes students who are interested in collective and affordable housing, disability justice, women’s spatial and design histories, penal histories, institutions of care, and, generally, topics that explore critical spatial practice.
View Assistant Professor Tara Bissett's faculty profile.