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Eric Firley is of French-German nationality and was born in Düsseldorf, Germany. He studied economics, architecture and city design in Fribourg, Lausanne, Weimar and London, and started his professional career in the real estate sector in Paris. Afterwards he worked for several years in design practices in Paris and London, before dedicating himself full-time to research and writing between 2007 and 2010. In 2011 he became assistant professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture. Firley is the initiator and co-author of Wiley’s Urban Handbook Series that consists of three reference works in the field of housing, high-rise urbanism and masterplanning. He has lectured in institutions around the world, including the Skyscraper Museum and Cooper Union in NYC, the Architectural Association and Bartlett School in London, UC Berkeley, the National University of Singapore, the Parisian Planning Office (APUR), Queensland University of Technology and McGill University in Montreal.
Firley’s research has been funded by various public and private sector entities, including Grosvenor, Stanhope, the Arts Council and Design for London. His current research focuses on urban design practice, alternative models of housing production and the impact of immigration on urban form.

Dorothy Jenkins Fields is a historian and archivist who was born and raised in Miami-Dade. She was one of the major actors in the preservation of the historical archives of Black Miami-Dade. Her outstanding work was recognized by numerous awards. In 2024, she was named a 2024-2025 Creative Futures Fellow by the University of Miami’s Center for Global Black Studies.

Dr. Fields obtained her BFA from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia in 1964 and received her Master’s degree from the University of Northern Colorado in 1974. In 1977, she founded The Black Archives History and Research Foundation of South Florida, Inc., a nonprofit manuscript and photographic archival repository to preserve the history of African-American communities in Miami. She also contributed to the organization of Miami-Dade’s Women’s Park. One of her greatest achievements, though, was leading the efforts against the demise of buildings in the historic area of Overtown, especially the Lyric Theatre.

She served as an educator for the Miami-Dade County Public Schools for four decades as well as for five years as a chair of Miami-Dade’s Historic Preservation Board. She is also part of the advisory board for the Haitian Heritage Museum and a board member of the Vizcaya Museum. She has two daughters, the attorney Katherine Fields Kpehyee Marsh and the Pulitzer-winner historian Edda Fields-Black.

–Vanessa Rodrigues Barcelos da Silva
Graduate Student Assistant for Manuscripts and Archives Management, Summer 2025

Sources:

(1) Black Archives Historic Lyric Theater Welcome Center Complex - https://www.miamidadearts.org/supporters-partners/black-archives-history-and-research-foundation-south-florida
(2) UM News - https://news.miami.edu/as/stories/2024/08/archival-work-with-deep-miami-roots.html