Architectures of Colonialism Constructed Histories, Conflicting Memories

International Online Conference, 16 to 19 June 2021 BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg

Speakers

  • Kamyar Abdi is a professor of archaeology at Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran. Abdi earned his BA in Archaeology from Tehran University (1992), his MA in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago (1996), and his PhD in Anthropological Archaeology from the University of Michigan (2002). After years of teaching in the US, he returned to Iran in 2017 to pursue his career as an active field archaeologist. He has directed many field projects in Iran and has worked in archaeological expeditions in the US, Turkey, and Guatemala. Abdi has published on a range of topics, including the archaeology of nomadic societies in Iran, the history and politics of Iranian archaeology, and pre-Islamic Iranian polities.

    Speaking 17 June 2021 14:00

  • Reinhard Bernbeck teaches Western Asian archaeology at the Freie Universität Berlin. He previously taught at Bryn Mawr College and Binghamton University before returning to Germany. He is co-editor of Ideologies in Archaeology (with Randall H. McGuire, 2011) and Subjects and Narratives in Archaeology (with Ruth van Dyke, 2015). He has conducted excavations in Iran, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Jordan and Germany. His interests include past political economies and the archaeology of the 20th century in Germany.

    Speaking 19 June 2021 12:40

  • Shraddha Bhatawadekar is affiliated with the DFG Research Training Group 1913 at the Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany. In her PhD research, she is investigating how the cultural significance of railway heritage is shaped, with a focus on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, a World Heritage Site located in Mumbai. She has a Master’s degree in Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology and more than a decade of international work experience in the field of heritage conservation, management and education.

    Speaking 18 June 2021 11:20

  • Jorge Correia holds a degree and a PhD in Architecture by the School of Architecture, University of Porto, with a thesis on Portuguese settlements in North Africa. Recently, his habilitation was on orientalism and urban space. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture, University of Minho. He is also the president of the European Architectural History Network, adviser for the Atlas of Cultural Landscape of Guimarães, a researcher for the TechNetEMPIRE project, and the director of the Landscape, Heritage and Territory Lab. His main research interests are the study of pre-1800 European colonial built environment, the cultural challenges of heritage, and traditional Islamic cities and their representation. He has been a Visiting Scholar Fellow and curator of the exhibition “Photographing the Arab city in the 19th century” at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and a guest lecturer at several universities across Europe, Brazil and the Middle East.

    Speaking 18 June 2021 17:10

  • Faezeh Dadfar is an archaeology graduate from Tehran University and Tarbiat Modarres University, two of the top universities in Iran. She is a future PhD candidate in Ancient History at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia (starting October 2021). Dadfar has been a co-researcher in grant-winning research projects in the Iran National Museum, Bagh Negarestan Museum, and Reza Abbasi Museum. She has participated in archaeological expeditions at Susa, Deh-Luran Plain, Komishani, and Zagheh in Iran and Kotayk and Vayots Dzor in Armenia. Having studied archaeology for nearly a decade, her studies are mainly focused on the dynamics and shared patterns of power in economic and political centres in ancient Iran and its neighbouring regions.

    Speaking 17 June 2021 14:00

  • Mark Dike DeLancey is Professor and Chair of History of Art and Architecture at DePaul University. He received his BA in combined studio art/art history from Oberlin College in 1996, and his PhD in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University in 2004. His research is focused on palace architecture in Cameroon, and more recently on calligraphy, contemporary art, and manuscripts in Mauritania. He is the author of Conquest and Construction: Palace Architecture in Northern Cameroon (Brill, 2016), co-author of the last three editions of Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cameroon (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, 2010, 2000) and has published articles in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Cahiers d’études africaines, The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, and Islamic Africa.

    Speaking 18 June 2021 16:50

  • Alice Santiago Faria is a researcher (CEEC Individual 2017), coordinator of “Art and the Portuguese Overseas Expansion” group (2016–), and principal researcher of the TechNetEMPIRE project funded by FCT, at CHAM-FCSH/NOVA. Member of DecolDEV – Decolonising Development: Research, Teaching and Practice (COST Action CA19129). Graduated in Architecture (University of Coimbra, 1997), PhD in Art History (Université de Paris I, 2011). She was postdoctoral research fellow at CHAM-FCSH/NOVA, CIUCHT-UL and UNL (2012-2017), and visiting fellow at CSISP, Goldsmith (University of London, 2012).

    Speaking 19 June 2021 10:20

  • Tilman Frasch is Reader in Asian History at Manchester Metropolitan University. He studied South Asian History, European History and Indian Languages at Heidelberg University, from which he received a doctorate with a thesis on the city and state of Bagan (Myanmar) in 1995. His research areas include pre-modern South and Southeast Asian history, Buddhist studies, urban history, and history of technology with a focus on the history of Myanmar. His publications in the field of the history of (colonial) urban history and technology include: “Kolonisierte Metropolen. Zur Sozio-Topographie urbanen Wandels unter kolonialen Vorzeichen”, themed issue of Periplus. Jahrbuch für Außereuropäische Geschichte 6, 1996, 131 pp. (ed. together with Andreas Eckert); “‘Empowering the City’: Indische Städte und Elektrizität, ca. 1880–1920”, in Ravi Ahuja/Christiane Brosius (eds.), Megastädte in Indien, Heidelberg: Draupadi, 2005, p. 35–46; and “Tracks in the City: Electricity and Mobility in Singapore and Rangoon, c. 1900–1930s”, Modern Asian Studies 46 (1) 2012, p. 97–118.

    Speaking 18 June 2021 14:00

  • Nuno Grancho is an architect, urban planner and architectural historian and theorist who works at the intersection of architecture, planning, material culture and colonial practices and their relationships with the transatlantic world and (post)colonial Asia, from the early 16th century up to the present day. Grancho holds a PhD in Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Coimbra. In 2014, he was a Visiting Researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Since 2017, Grancho has been a Research Fellow at DINÂMIA’CET – University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal. He is head researcher for the Research Project “Asia on the Move: Two-Way Processes, Data and Legacy of Architecture and Urbanism from Former Portuguese Colonial Territories in South Asia”, supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Lisbon, Portugal, and hosted by DINÂMIA’CET – University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL).

    Speaking 17 June 2021 14:20

  • Zulfikar Hirji (DPhil, Oxford) is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at York University, Toronto. His research explores knowledge production, representation and identity, material, visual and sensory cultures, and critical pedagogies, with a focus on Islam and Muslim societies in a range of historical and contemporary contexts. He has conducted archival, field-based, and community-engaged research in East Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Europe, and North America. His published works include Approaches to the Qur’an in sub-Saharan Africa (2019), Islam: An Illustrated Journey (2018), Between Empires: Sheikh-Sir Mbarak al-Hinawy (1896–1959) (2012), and Diversity and Pluralism in Muslim Contexts (2010). He has also curated exhibitions including Memories of Stone: Landscapes of Prayer, Death and Commemoration in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2017), Cities of the Dead: The Ancestral Cemeteries of KyrgyzstanPhotographs by Margaret Morton (2015), and Connect, Create, Cairo: Build a City with History and Technology (2014).

    Speaking 17 June 2021 15:40

  • Livia Hurley is a graduate of the School of Architecture at TU Dublin and of Trinity College Dublin, currently completing a PhD on the Architecture and Urban History of Irish Breweries at the School of Art History and Cultural Policy, UCD. She is an architect and historian, and a Design Fellow at the School of Architecture in University College Dublin. Hurley also works as an architectural heritage consultant. Her practice encompasses research, writing, teaching and collaboration, and she has lectured and published widely on Irish architecture and the built environment. She is one of five editors and principal authors of Architecture 1600–2000, Volume IV of the Art and Architecture of Ireland project (Yale University Press, 2014). In 2017 she published the co-edited volume (with Edward McParland) The Building Site in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Four Courts Press). She is the Chair of the Irish Georgian Society Conservation Awards Panel, a Peer Assessor for the Arts Council of Ireland, and a Trustee of Lambay Island, County Dublin.

    Speaking 18 June 2021 15:40

  • Antoinette Jackson is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, Florida, and Director of the USF Heritage Research Lab. Her research focuses on identity and representation at public sites of history and heritage, and she has led numerous research projects in the US and in the Caribbean. She was recently awarded a USF funded research grant for her project entitled African American Burial Grounds & Remembering Project Living Communities Challenging Silenced Histories in Florida. She is editor of the international journal Present Pasts and guest editor with Rachel Breunlin of a special issue entitled “Decolonizing Ways of Knowing: Heritage, Living Communities, and Indigenous Built Environments” for the international open access journal Genealogy. Her book Speaking for the Enslaved Heritage Interpretation at Antebellum Plantation Sites, was published by Routledge in 2012. And her new book, Heritage, Tourism, and Race the Other Side of Leisure was published by Routledge in 2020.

    Speaking 17 June 2021 19:30

  • Nora Lafi is a historian (PhD, 1999; Habilitation, 2011) who specializes in the study of the Ottoman empire and of the societies of the Middle East and North Africa. She works as a Senior Research Fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. She chairs the international and collaborative research project HISDEMAB of the Leibniz-Association on the theme of the historicity of democracy in the Arab and Muslim worlds. She is also Privatdozentin at the Freie Universität of Berlin (Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies). In 2020, she was Senior Fellow at the Max Weber Centre at Erfurt University (Religion and Urbanity Research Group). She co-chairs with U. Freitag the “Cities Compared: Governance, Consultative Mechanisms and Plurality” project within the EUME programme (Forum Transregionale Studien). Among her publications: Esprit civique et organisation citadine dans l’empire ottoman (Brill, 2019); Urban Governance Under the Ottomans: Between Cosmopolitanism and Conflict (ed. with U. Freitag; Routledge, 2014); Une ville du Maghreb entre ancien régime et réformes ottomans (L’Harmattan, 2002).

    Speaking 18 June 2021 17:30

  • Antonieta Reis Leite is a researcher (CEEC Individual 2018), co-coordinator of the research group CCARQ | Cities, Cultures, and Architecture at Centre for Social Sciences at the University of Coimbra. Invited Professor of history of architecture at the dARQ University of Coimbra. Member of DecolDEV – Decolonising Development: Research, Teaching and Practice (COST Action CA19129), researcher of TechNetEMPIRE project. Graduated in Architecture (Univ. Coimbra, 2000), DEA in Art History (University Pablo de Olavide - Spain, 2005), PhD in Architecture (2012). She was a postdoctoral research fellow at CES-UC e CHAM-FCSH/NOVA (2014–2020).

    Speaking 19 June 2021 10:20

  • Meenakshi is a research scholar working on modern South Asian history at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her research interests include the intersections of material history, the history of science and technology and infrastructural history, and the evolution of the built and natural environments in the past two centuries. Her current project is on the history of cement and concrete in 19th- and 20th-century India. She holds a Master’s degree from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and an undergraduate degree from Ambedkar University, Delhi.

    Speaking 17 June 2021 10:20

  • Lisandra Franco de Mendonça is an architect and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minho. She obtained her double PhD degree in 2016 and 2020 in architecture and urbanism and restoration of architecture from the Universities of Coimbra and Sapienza of Rome, with a study on the 20th century architecture of Maputo, Mozambique. She completed a post-graduation (MSc) in Restoration of Monuments at the Post-Graduate School for the Study and Restoration of Monuments (Sapienza University of Rome), with a dissertation on the conservation of modern architecture, and was awarded a degree in architecture from the University of Porto. Her research field is the history of 20th-century built production under dictatorial and colonial regimes in Europe and Africa. Within this field, she develops an interrogative view oriented towards the conservation of modern ensembles, focusing especially on patrimonial transferences, translocal spatial production, and relations between European and African parallel modernities.

    Speaking 19 June 2021 11:20

  • Amy Miranda is an art historian of the ancient Mediterranean world with a particular focus on the art and architecture of the Roman provinces in the Imperial period. She received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland, USA) in 2020. Amy is currently at the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions, Aarhus University, where she is the postdoctoral fellow on the project, “Archive Archaeology: Preserving And Sharing Palmyra’s Cultural Heritage through Harald Ingholt’s Digital Archives”.

    Speaking 19 June 2021 10:00

  • Monika Motylinska is an architectural and urban historian, with an interest in cycles of architectural production in 19th and 20th century in the “Global South”. Since January 2020 she has been a junior research group leader in the project “Conquering (with) Concrete: German Construction Companies as Global Players in Local Contexts” (funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung) at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space, Erkner. At the same time, she is investigating, together with Dr. Rachel Lee, the work of the Institute for Building in the Tropics as part of the “Centring Africa” research programme (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/Canadian Centre for Architecture). Between 2016 and 2019, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the IRS. In 2016, she defended her PhD thesis at the TU Berlin on the treatment of post-war heritage in Germany. Results of her research have been published in international journals and edited volumes.

    Speaking 17 June 2021 11:20

  • Itohan Osayimwese is Associate Professor of the History of Art & Architecture and affiliate faculty in Africana Studies, Urban Studies, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown University. Her research engages with theories of modernity, postcolonialism, and globalization to analyze built and designed environments in 19th- and 20th-century East and West Africa, the Caribbean, and Germany. Her book, Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Germany (Pittsburgh, 2017), received a 2016 Society of Architectural Historians/Mellon Foundation award. Her work has been published in the Journal of Architecture, African Arts, Architectural Theory Review, and Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review. Her current book projects explore migration and the acquisition of property as the realization of freedom for Afro-Caribbean people, and translation as a critical source in the historiography of African architecture. She serves on the board of directors of the Society of Architectural Historians, the European Architectural History Network, and Thresholds.

    Speaking 16 June 2021 19:30

  • Mafalda Pacheco is a researcher at CHAM-FCSH/NOVA and full-time researcher in the project TechNetEMPIRE. Member of DecolDEV – Decolonising Development: Research, Teaching and Practice (COST Action CA19129). Graduated (2004), Master (2009) and PhD in Architecture (2018) from the IST/ULisboa, with a PhD scholarship funded by FCT (2012– 2016). She collaborated in architectural studios (2002–2010) in Portugal, Spain and Croatia with a scholarship funded by IAESTE (2004). Currently visiting professor in the Conservation, Restoration and Rehabilitation course of the Master in Architecture at FA/ULisboa.

    Speaking 19 June 2021 10:20

  • Elizabeth Rankin is Professor Emerita of Art History at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She was previously Professor and Dean of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, where she initiated her extensive publications on South African art and architecture.

    Speaking 18 June 2021 10:00

  • Karin Reisinger is FWF Hertha Firnberg Fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Education in the Arts, following postdoctoral fellowships at ArkDes and KTH Stockholm School of Architecture, which allowed her to engage with the mining areas of Northern Sweden. Working at the intersection between architectures and cultural studies, feminisms and ecologies, recent book chapters include “Reflection about a Disappearing Mining Town in the Archive: Staying with its Non-Permanency” in ArkDes Research Symposium, and “Connective Oscillations: Architectures Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” in More (both 2020). Karin co-organized the AHRA conference Architecture & Feminisms: Ecologies, Economies, Technologies and co-edited the subsequent volumes, Architecture and Culture 5 (3) and field 7 (1), both 2017.

    Speaking 19 June 2021 11:40

  • Mohona Reza is an architect and architectural historian, pursuing her PhD in Architectural History at the University of Edinburgh. She is passionate about teaching and collaborating with the university as a tutor. Her research focuses on public buildings in Bangladesh during the cold war context of East and West Pakistan between 1947 and 1971. She is interested in the colonial networks of different periods and postcolonial modern architecture, specifically relating to world politics and nation building. Mohona Reza received her Bachelor’s degree in architecture from BRAC University (2014) and a MSc in Architectural History and Theory from the University of Edinburgh (2017). She is keen to associate herself with different activities relating to architecture, publishing and design.

    Speaking 17 June 2021 16:50

  • Joaquim Rodrigues dos Santos is a researcher and invited professor at the ARTIS – Institute of Art History, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, Portugal. He was a post-doctoral researcher (2014–19) with a project on the safeguarding of Portuguese-influenced heritage in South Asia, within the University of Lisbon, Portugal, and the Goa University, India. He holds a PhD in Architecture (2012) from the University of Alcalá de Henares, Spain, with a thesis on the rehabilitation of medieval fortifications, graduated in Architecture (2004), and M.Arch. in Architecture, Territory and Memory (2002) from the University of Coimbra, Portugal, with a dissertation on the creation of a cultural image of the Portuguese castle, and holds a technical specialisation in Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Historical Sites (2006) from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. His main research areas are heritage preservation (especially transcultural heritage) and the history of architecture and cities in Portugal and its former overseas territories.

    Speaking 18 June 2021 15:20

  • Rolf Michael Schneider is Professor Emeritus of Classical Archaeology at the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich; Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town; and Honorary Fellow at the African Studies Centre, Leiden. He has held senior positions in Heidelberg, Cambridge and Berkeley.

    In 2020 Rankin and Schneider jointly published the two-volume book From Memory to Marble: The Historical Frieze of the Voortrekker Monument. Part I: The Frieze / Part II: The Scenes, African Minds and De Gruyter.

    Speaking 18 June 2021 10:00

  • Beatriz Serrazina is a PhD student at the Centre for Social Studies of University of Coimbra (CES/III-UC) in the Patrimónios programme. She holds an MA in Architecture from FAUL (2016). Her research explores the role played by Diamang, a private mining company, in the production of space in Angola, covering its transnational connections and practices of colonization. Current research interests focus on architectural and planning history, colonial and post-colonial heritage, and circulation of knowledge. She is a research fellow in the project “ArchWar: Dominance and Mass Violence through Housing and Architecture During Colonial Wars: The Portuguese Case”, coordinated by Ana Vaz Milheiro. In 2016 she undertook a research trip to Angola, and in 2019 she co-organized the exhibition “Colonizing Africa: Reports on Colonial Public Works” in Lisbon. Publications include: “Crossed Cultures in Lunda, Angola: Diamang’s Urban Project and its Legacies”, TDSR, 31 (2) 2020; “Diamang’s Urban Project: Between the Peace of Versailles and the Colonial Act” (with Ana Vaz Milheiro) in Carlos Nunes Silva (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Urban Planning in Africa, 2020.

    Speaking 17 June 2021 10:00

  • Gregory Valdespino is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Chicago. His research examines the interconnectedness of African and European histories with a particular focus on material culture, imperialism, domesticity, and welfare. His dissertation project is entitled “At Home in Empire: Dwelling, Domesticity, and Welfare in France and Senegal, 1914–1974”. His forthcoming published work includes the article, “In His Eyes I am Foreign to France: Migration and Repatriation Between France and Senegal, 1858–1911”, for the journal French Colonial History and a chapter, “Plagues, Housing, and Battles Over Segregation in Dakar, 1914”, for the edited volume Epidemic Urbanism. These works all examine the intersection of intimate lives and imperial policies in France and colonial West Africa. His work is supported by the Committee on African Studies at the University of Chicago and the George Lurcy Charitable and Educational Trust.

    Speaking 17 June 2021 17:10

  • Georgi Verbeeck is an Associate Professor of Modern History and Political Culture at Maastricht University and a part-time (Full) Professor of German History at the KU Leuven. He holds a BA in History (1981) and Philosophy (1982), an MA in History (1983), and a PhD in History (1991) from the University of Leuven. His research focuses on modern and contemporary German history, the history of historiography, and the politics of memory, political radicalism and totalitarianism. He is a former fellow at the Institute für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Wassenaar, and has served as guest lecturer and professor at the universities of Stellenbosch, Pretoria, and Sabah (Malaysia). He co-directed the internal research project (funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO) “Totalitarianism and Competing Memories in Europe after 1989”.

    Speaking 18 June 2021 10:20

  • Matthew Wells teaches the history and theory of architecture at the gta Institute, ETH Zurich. He studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art and completed his doctorate at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art. His writing focuses on representational techniques, environmental technologies, and professionalism in the built environment of the 19th and 20th centuries. He was awarded the Theodor-Fischer-Preis in 2019 and commended in the RIBA President's Awards for Research in 2017. His first book, Survey, will be published by Park Books and Drawing Matter in Autumn 2021. A second book, Modelling in the Metropolis: Architectural Models in Nineteenth-Century London, based on his doctoral research, is in preparation.

    Speaking 17 June 2021 15:20

  • Jens Wiedow is a lecturer in the Department of Architecture and Spatial Planning at the Namibian University of Science and Technology, and a doctoral candidate at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, where he is working on a thesis examining the post-war architecture of the Public Works Department in South-West Africa. His interests lie in the intersection of colonialism and modernist architecture in Africa.

    Speaking 17 June 2021 11:40

  • Yichi Zhang is an ERC-funded postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oslo. Trained as a landscape architect, conservator and garden historian, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow (2019) at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (Yale University) and research fellow (2015) in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University. His research interests include transnational architecture production, modern Chinese urban and garden history, the history of British settlements in China, and conservation of historical garden and heritage sites. His recent publications include: “Hebei New Area in Tianjin, 1902–1912: Implementing Japanese Commercial and Industrial Urban Planning Ideas in China”: Planning Perspectives, 2021; “From ‘Arcadia of the Literati’ to ‘Extravagant Enclosure’: The Tianjin Salt Merchant Gardens of the Qing Dynasty”, Landscape Research 45 (7) 2020, p. 789–801; and “From Enclosure to Necessity: The Functions of Public Parks in the International Settlement of Shanghai, 1842-1943,” Garden History, 46 (2) 2018, p. 170–183.

    Speaking 18 June 2021 11:40

  • Ying Zhou is an architect and assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). In her recent book, Urban Loopholes: Creative Alliances of Spatial Production in Shanghai’s City Center (Birkhäuser, 2017), she unpacked the mechanisms of urban spatial production that facilitated rapid reglobalization in the transition economy of the Chinese city, including marketization, gentrification with Chinese characteristics, heritageization, and creative city promotion, amongst others. Her current research looks at the rapidly evolving spaces for contemporary visual art in the cities of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore and the specificities of such developments between global aspirations and place-specific institutional frameworks, and historic and colonial legacies. She has published in Critical Planning, Urban China, Monu, Frieze, LEAP, among other journals, and her works have exhibited at the Shenzhen/HK Biennale, Rotterdam Biennale, Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel, amongst others. Born in Shanghai, Ying holds a BSE from Princeton, a M.Arch from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, and a PhD from the ETH Zurich.

    Speaking 18 June 2021 14:20