It is recommended that interested candidates contact the Director of the PhD program and potential supervisors prior to enrollment to discuss their research interests.
Dr. Edson Cabalfin
Assistant Professor
School of Architecture and Interior Design
Edson G. Cabalfin received his Ph.D. in History of Architecture and Urbanism (Major in History of Architecture, Minors in Historic Preservation and Southeast Asian Studies) from Cornell University. He previously received his B.S. Architecture and Master of Architecture degrees from the University of the Philippines and a M.S. Architecture degree from the University of Cincinnati. His research interests revolve around the intersections of the designed environment with issues of identity politics, power, gender, representation, nationalism, colonialism/post-colonialism, and heritage conservation. He has published articles in journals, book anthologies and conference proceedings on queer spaces, identity politics of Philippine pavilions in international expositions, art deco architecture in the Philippines, modern post-colonial Philippine architectures, and post-colonial architectural historiography. A licensed architect in the Philippines, he has been involved in various multi-disciplinary design projects in architecture, interior design, graphic design, fashion design, costume and set design, heritage conservation planning and design research in North America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Dr. Nnamdi Elleh
Associate Professor
School of Architecture and Interior Design
513.244.2454
Nnamdi Elleh is Associate Professor of Architecture, History and Theory at the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP), University of Cincinnati. He is the Coordinator of the Master of Science and the Ph.D. Program in Architecture. He was trained as an architect at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and he received his Ph.D. in art history from Northwestern University. Elleh was a Fulbright Teaching-Research Scholar at the University of Cape Town to study post-apartheid nationalist inspired architecture in South Africa (Jan – Aug 2012); a Visiting Architectural Historian at the School of Architecture, University of Cape Town, South Africa, in 2008; a recipient of the Samuel Kress and Graham Architectural Foundation grant; a Samuel Ittleson Pre-Doctoral Fellow (2000-2002) at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art (CASVA), Washington, D.C.; and recipient of the Outstanding Junior Faculty Award at the University of Cincinnati in 2003. His books in architecture include African Architecture, Evolution and Transformation (McGraw Hill, 1996), the first comprehensive text on African architecture from antiquity to the present; Architecture and Power in Africa (Praeger, 2001), and Abuja: The Single Most Ambitious Urban Design Project of the 20th Century (VDG, 2001). He is working on a book titled Modern and Contemporary Architecture in Africa (W. W. Norton, 2013), and he has contributed to several national and international exhibitions. Published articles and book chapters include “Perspectives on the Architecture of Africa’s Underprivileged Urban Dwellers,” in Social Dynamics, Vol. 37, No. 1; “Abuja, the International Congress for Modern Architecture (CIAM), and Global Architectural History,” in Who Knows Tomorrow. His essays on art and architecture include “Bearden’s Dialogue with Africa and the Avant-Garde,” in The Art of Romare Bearden (2003), and Embracing the Muse, Africa and African American Art, New York: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, 2004.
Research Interests Are:
· Modern Architecture as Diverse, Multi-Centered, Regional and Localized Experiences in Different Parts of the World.
· Relationships between Art, Architecture and Public Space.
· Modern and Contemporary Art, Especially, Early Twentieth Century.
· History, Theory and Criticism(s) of Architecture in Global Perspective(s).
· Nationalist Architecture, Politics, and Urban Design as Metaphors of Power and Development.
· The Relationships between Culture, Traditional Architecture, Technological Innovations, and Changes in Social and Spatial Experiences.
· Vernacular Modernism(s), Architecture, Tourism and the Environment
· Vernacular Architecture and Urban Design in Africa and the Middle East
· The Role of Capitalism (Agriculture, Mining and Primary Industries) in the Production of the Built Environment in Developing Countries.
· The Architecture and Urban Design in the Parts of the Emerging Great Cities of the World that are often Described with a Plethora of Words including Barrio, Bidonville, Favela, Gecokondus, Ghetto, Informal Settlements, Shantytown, and Squatter’s Settlements.
Dr. Aarati Kanekar
Associate Professor
School of Architecture and Interior Design
Aarati Kanekar is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Interior Design at DAAP, University of Cincinnati. Her research and publications focus on issues of design formulation, more specifically representation & spatial construction of meaning, Much of her research and publications on morphological studies in inter-media translations stem from her doctoral research on construction and transformation of meanings from literature to architecture which examined The Divine Comedy through various art forms. Prior to this, she has also worked on post-war reconstruction and conservation projects in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Turkey, and India. She has published numerous articles, essays, and encyclopedia entries, and her publications extend from architectural journals such as the Journal of Architecture to Literature and Philosophy journals such as TLE and Philosophica. She is currently completing a book on translation and representation in architecture titled Architecture’s Pre-texts (Routledge, 2013).
She is a two-time recipient of the Pogue Wheeler Fellowship, the Doctoral Achievement Award, the ARCC/King Award for Architectural Research, and the Aga Khan/MIT Fellowship, among others. She has also been instrumental in initiating an ongoing exchange program between CEPT, India and DAAP, and is its coordinator. She is also the International Special Faculty Advisor for India to the Provost.
Dr. Adrian Parr
Associate Professor
School of Architecture and Interior Design
Department of Sociology
Adrian Parr is an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Interior Design and the Department of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati. She is the 2011 winner of the Rieveschl Award for Scholarly and Creative Work and will be a Taft Center for Humanities Fellow in 2012-2013. Her work examines the sociopolitical dynamics informing the built environment and cultural practices. Her recent work studies the connections between capitalism, neoliberalism, and the growing movement around sustainability and environmental justice. She serves on several editorial boards and has presented on her work at Cornell University, the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Customs House, the Museum of Sydney, for the FreshOutlook Foundation in Canada, ZKM in Germany, the Uptown Theater in Calgary as the Gillmor Scholar for the University of Calgary, and at Harvard University. She is the author of Hijacking Sustainability, Deleuze and Memorial Culture, and Exploring the Work of Leonardo da Vinci in the Context of Contemporary Art and Culture. She is the editor of The Deleuze Dictionary (now in its 2nd edition), New Directions in Sustainable Design (co-edited with Michael Zaretsky), and Deleuze and the Contemporary World (co-edited with Ian Buchanan). Her forthcoming book, The Wrath of Capital, will be published by Columbia University Press.
Dr. Patrick Snadon
Associate Professor
School of Architecture and Interior Design
Patrick Snadon is the co-author of The Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe (Johns Hopkins University Press 2006) which won the Society of Architectural Historians Hitchcock Book Award (2008). He also co-authored 50 From The 50s: Modern Architecture and Interiors in Cincinnati (Urban Currents, 2008). He has published numerous other articles, essays, encyclopedia entries on American architecture and interiors. His areas of expertise are the history of 18th-20th century interiors and architecture; American interiors and architecture; Modernist architecture and interiors; gender, sexuality and space; historic preservation and adaptive-use of buildings.
Dr Jeff Tilman
Associate Professor
School of Architecture and Interior Design
Jeff Tilman researches and writes on the history of American architecture between the Civil War and World War II. He has recently published Arthur Brown Jr., Progressive Classicist, a monograph on the classically-oriented architect of San Francisco City Hall and part of the Federal Triangle in Washington, D.C. He also continues to research the influence of the French Ecole des Beaux-Arts on American art and design, and on issues that illustrate the difference between the American and European Modern movements. Professor Tilman's interest in historical preservation stems from a conviction that preservation is a part of architectural practice, and that no work of architecture is fully successful unless it addresses its pre-existing social, political, physical, and historic context. His preservation experiences range from a study of rural preservation issues in Central Virginia to historical advising on the restoration of San Francisco City Hall.
Dr. Rebecca Williamson
Associate Professor
School of Architecture and Interior Design
Rebecca Williams is a registered architect with experience in practice in Switzerland and New York (offices of Santiago Calatrava, Sergio Calori, John Petrarca, and Livio Vacchini). Prior to joining the University of Cincinnati in fall 2006, she taught for five years in France at the Ecole d'Architecture de Versailles as part of an exchange with the University of Illinois and at the Master of Urbanism Program of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences-Po). She created and coordinates an exchange between the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture in Paris and the University of Cincinnati and is involved in numerous other international initiatives. Among her recent publications are ‘Durisch + Nolli: An Impatient Search,’ published in the De aedibus series on contemporary architecture (Quart, Luzerne 2012, distributed in the US by Stout), ‘Al Fresco: When Air Became Fresh’ published in the Alphabet City series issue on Air (MIT Press 2010), and ‘Voices of Waste’ in Speciale'Z (ESA-Paris 2010). She served as research editor for Architecture School: Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America (MIT Press 2012).
Adrian Parr (Acting Director)
PhD/MsArch Program Director
