Josh Andrew Lerner. Born in the fair state
of Michigan, USA. Moved to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania for a
bit, then settled down in Baltimore, Maryland at age 4. I
ended up lingering in Baltimore for 14 years, before departing
in 1996 for Wesleyan University, in Connecticut. At Wesleyan,
I explored the reaches of a fine liberal arts education, and
an even finer world of student activism. After an extended
sojourn in Melbourne, Australia, I finished my degree, and
swore that I was done with school for good.
Anxious to delve into practical work and
leave the continent, I signed up for the Peace Corps, in Slovakia.
I lived in the city of Košice for
the next two years, working with a development NGO called
ETP Slovakia and a variety of community groups involved in
student, environmental, and Romany issues. Working in the
development industry and alongside extreme racism and poverty
led me to question my understanding of community development
and my role as an activist.
Peace Corps left Slovakia in the summer
of 2002, and so did I. Next stop was Toronto, where, despite
my earlier swearing, I returned to school for a Masters in
Urban Planning at the University of Toronto. Over the course
of two politicizing years I became more interested in transformative
political, social, and economic change, especially in the
form of popular education and participatory budgeting. After
much learning, large quantities of roti, and many trips to
New York, I finished my degree and departed Toronto.
For the next year,
Renate and I traveled, studied, worked, and lived in Latin
America, the last six months in Rosario, Argentina. If Toronto
politicized me, Latin America helped me better understand
how political engagement works, doesn't work, and might work.
Not coincidentally, it also encouraged me to pursue a PhD
in Politics, focusing on participatory democracy, at The New
School in New York, starting September 2005.
While working on my PhD, I've squeezed
in a fair amount of research, publications,
and teaching. For
two years I worked as a popular educator with the Brooklyn
Center for the Urban Environment, leading youth workshops
on urban planning. More recently, I've taught university-level
courses as an adjunct professor at Fordham University. Together
with Gianpaolo Baiocchi, I also founded The
Participatory Budgeting Project, which has involved an
increasing amount of speaking and consulting work.
