Heyda is a professor of urban design and architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is also a faculty scholar at the Center for Race, Ethnicity and Equity, the Center for the Environment, and the American culture studies program. She researches the political economy of architecture and urbanism in American cities and public spaces.
Heyda’s interdisciplinary approach blends mapping and design with planning, public policy, and the humanistic social sciences to engage contradictions in the built environment, for critical reimagination.