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June Manning Thomas is Centennial Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 2003 she was inducted as a Fellow in the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Her books include Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), Planning Progress: Lessons from Shoghi Effendi (Ottawa: Association for Bahá'í Studies, 1999), the co-edited (with Marsha Ritzdorf) Urban Planning and the African American Community: In the Shadows (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1997), and the co-authored Detroit: Race and Uneven Development (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987). She has published numerous articles and book chapters as well. She teaches classes in central-city planning, urban theory, and planning theory.

Dr. Thomas writes about diversification of the planning profession, planning history, and social equity in neighborhoods and urban revitalization. Recent research examined the implications of current research for urban policy in the state of Michigan, assessed the role of minority-race planners in the quest for a just city, explored the relationship between the concept of social equity and the civil rights movement, and examined the link between sustainability and social equity. She continues to explore planning history, particularly in Detroit, through examination of the evolution of thinking about public housing.

She is the recipient of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning 1999 Paul Davidoff award - given every two years for the book which best represents the ideals of social justice and equity in U. S. urban planning - for her book Redevelopment and Race. Until 2007 she was a professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, where she developed statewide initiatives to link urban planning services on campus with community development needs in several Michigan cities. She and her husband Richard, a historian, have two adult children. They are active members of the Bahá'í Faith, a belief system which has fueled their professional interests in promoting racial and international unity.