Benita Menezes, currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology, received her Bachelor of Architecture, from the University of Mumbai, India, and a Master of Arts in Urban Planning, from the University of British Columbia, Canada. Examining land acquisition for industrialization in rural India, her research asks, how agrarian families navigate procedural processes resulting in loss of land and livelihood. Her research interests are land litigation, anthropology of the state, social movements, ethnographic methods, and data visualization. Before coming to Baltimore, she worked with nonprofit organizations, an urban design think tank and an architecture school in Mumbai and Vancouver. Creative approaches to learning and building a peer community of storytellers are critical to her approach in the classroom.