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Dr. Julian Brash's research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of anthropology, geography, and interdisciplinary urban studies. They include urban development and politics, economic development policy, urban neoliberalism, the politics of space and place, urban identity, political economy, aesthetics and design, and the study of North American society and culture. Dr. Brash's 2011 book "Bloomberg's New York: Class and Governance in the Luxury City," published by the University of Georgia press, focused on how Mayor Michael Bloomberg's corporate and technocratic approach to urban governance fared in the contentious arena of New York City development politics. His work has been published in Urban Anthropology, City & Society, Urbanities, Critique of Anthropology, Social Text, Cultural Geography, Antipode and in a number of edited volumes. Dr. Brash is the former editor-in-chief of the journal City & Society and has held several leadership positions in the Society for the Anthropology of North America and the Critical Urban Anthropology Association.

Dr. Brash's current research focuses on the High Line and other new public parks in New York City. This research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation, and has led to a number of publications in edited volumes and in journals like Environment and Planning C, City & Society, and Cultural Geography. Dr. Brash is also co-leading a project aimed at reconceptualizing urban anthropology given contemporary urban dynamics entitled “Mutations in Urbanism: Urban Anthropology Beyond the City” with Dr. Jeff Maskovsky (CUNY Graduate Center). This project has been supported by the School of Advanced Research and the CUNY Graduate Center. Dr. Brash is also currently writing a short book aimed at introducing general audiences to urban anthropology; "Urban Anthropology: The Basics" will be published by Routledge in 2026.

At Montclair State University, Dr. Brash has regularly taught Cultural Anthropology, Urban Anthropology, Anthropological Theory, and the Anthropology of Multicultural America. He has also taught an Honors program course on global urbanization and seminars on Occupy Wall Street, the Anthropology of Public Space, and the Anthropology of Space and Place. He is the director of the new interdisciplinary Urban Humanities program, and teaches its introductory course.

Before joining the anthropology faculty at Montclair State University in 2010, Dr. Brash was an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Toledo, where he taught in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology, the Department of Geography & Planning, and the PhD program in Spatially Integrated Social Science. He received his PhD from the Anthropology Program of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2006. He also holds a Masters Degree from a University Not to Be Named and a BA in Political Science from Haverford College.

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