In Memoriam: Stephen Ramos (DDes ’09)
The GSD remembers Stephen Ramos (DDes ’09), who passed away on Tuesday, January 20, 2026. An international scholar of urban planning and design, Stephen was an accomplished author and researcher, focused on port cities, energy transition, logistics, and planning history.
Stephen was the founder and Co-director of Port Futures + Social Logistics (PFSL), a film-based research and public platform “dedicated to issues of art and urbanism, international energy transition, and geo-cultural flux.” In his role as Co-director, Stephen conceived and sustained PFSL as a collaborative forum for filmmakers, scholars, students, and community practitioners; its screenings and associated programs brought critical attention to the infrastructures, labor, and cultural lives of waterfront places.
In October 2025, PFSL launched an international screening series , which included a presentation at the GSD. Stephen’s enduring commitment to combining pedagogy, public engagement, and place-based inquiry continues to inspire.
Stephen was the author of Dubai Amplified: The Engineering of a Port Geography (Ashgate, 2010) and co-editor of Infrastructure, Sustainability and Design, as part of the GSD’s Zoftnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure . In November 2025, Stephen published Folk Engineering: Planning Southern Regionalism with the University of North Carolina Press, described by Barbara Brown Wilson as “a much-needed text that treads on new ground.”
The GSD is deeply grateful for Stephen’s role as a founding editor of New Geographies, a journal produced by doctoral candidates at the GSD through Harvard University Press. New Geographies seeks to “position design’s agency amid concerns about infrastructure, technology, ecology, and globalization.” Learn about the inaugural issue, New Geographies 01: After Zero.
Stephen joined the University of Georgia College of Environment + Design in 2011 and served as a dedicated professor, mentor, and researcher for 15 years. Stephen’s lasting contributions to design scholarship will shape many for years to come.
Stephen is survived by his wife, Nuria, and their two children.
Learn more about Stephen’s life and legacy.
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