Brad Samuels
Visiting Professor II
Brad Samuels is a founding partner at SITU and the Director of SITU Research—an organization that merges data and design to create new pathways for justice. SITU's work mobilizes an arsenal of technologies to identify and surface critical evidence and then shape it into a narrative driven by transparent, accurate sourcing. The work supports activists, advocates, and lawyers, bridging the gap between digital evidence and the communities that can best deploy them towards justice and accountability.
Outside the multidisciplinary practice, Brad sits on the Technology Advisory Board for the International Criminal Court, The Advisory Board for the Carnegie Mellon's Center for Human Rights Science, the Advisory Board for Dartmouth's Wright Center for the Study of Computation and Just Communities and the board of The Architectural League of New York. He is a Fellow with the Urban Design Forum and teaches at The Cooper Union.
Projects
Documenting NYPD’s Suppression of Peaceful Protest in the Bronx (2020)
Approximately 300 people assembled in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx on June 4, 2020 to protest police violence and systemic racism. The demonstrators marched peacefully until their action was forcefully ended by the New York Police Department (NYPD) at the intersection of 136th Street and Brooke Avenue. We collaborated with Human Rights Watch to examine the relationship between the protest, the City’s 8 p.m. curfew and the frequently-used police tactic of “kettling,” which was deployed to trap and then arrest protesters.
Documenting Environmental Crime in Cerro de Pasco (2020)
As a result of this extensive mining activity, Cerro de Pasco and its natural surroundings are heavily polluted, with dire consequences for the health of the city’s residents. Hazardous contaminants such as lead and arsenic are found in high concentrations in the soil and drinking water, and heavy metal poisoning is widespread in the urban population. Our interactive platform, developed in collaboration with Source International and the Center for Climate Crime Analysis, provides a detailed and comprehensive look at the dangerous conditions the mining operations create for the people of Cerro de Pasco.
After the Strike (2021)
Over the month of May in 2021, the Israeli military attacked Gaza over 1,500 times. Our team collaborated with The Associated Press on an investigation into one particular IDF airstrike impacting the Nassir family, long-time residents of the site in Beit Hanoun. The video analysis we developed of the damage inflicted on this dense residential neighborhood highlighted an under-recognized aspect of the asymmetric warfare that continues to plague Israel and Palestine: the enormous human and economic costs of the cycle of demolitions, cleanup, and reconstruction that ensues even from ostensibly ‘surgical’ or ‘targeted’ military interventions.
