I am interested in intersections between geopolitics and architectural discourse in a variety of contexts--historical and contemporary. 

My latest book, Africa’s Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage (Princeton University Press, 2025), reveals the hidden history of the dismemberment of African buildings and the dispersal of their constituent parts across Europe and North America, positing architecture as a potential target of and mechanism for restitution.

I recently published German Colonialism in Africa and its Legacies: Architecture, Art, Urbanism & Visual Culture (Bloomsbury 2023), which is a series of essays combining formal analyses of painting, photography, performance art, buildings, and space with the postcolonial discourse analysis, and is the first in-depth exploration of the designed and visual aspects of German colonialism, the book presents.

My previous book, Colonialism and the Archive of Modern Architecture in Germany (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), reassesses the history of modern architecture in Germany in light of Germany's colonial encounter and the country's broader embeddedness in turn-of-the-century processes of global integration. I posit the concept of the archive as one way to globalize the history of German modernism. By looking at four distinct moments at which colonial interests converged with progressive architectural discourse in Germany, I reveal that modern architecture not only cannibalized some of the forms and practices associated with non-Western cultures and those produced out of European encounters with them, but also, more fundamentally, that this convergence helped to define the conceptual shape of modern architecture.

An ongoing book project investigates the effects of migration on the built environment in Barbados from emancipation to the present. I hypothesize that the landscape of incompleteness that characterizes the country can be understood in terms of 1) contemporary patterns of emigration, return migration, and flows of capital associated with these movements; 2) the tourism industry and its volatile economic system; and 3) patterns of land tenure and ownership that have their roots in the rigidly stratified plantation society of the past.

A third book currently underway is a critical introduction to and annotated English translation the first German language specialist texts on African architecture.. This project grew out of research for my first monograph and my discovery of four forgotten nineteenth-century German texts on African architecture. The essays proved to be very interesting as primary sources for my research on German colonialism and its impact on modernism in Germany but also as scholarly works in their own right.
A longer term project explores the architecture of postcolonial development aid in West Africa in relation to colonial and modernist models, the critique of colonialism, nationalist movements, and the then-emerging rubric of development. Here, I am interested in a variety of international, pan-African, and national initiatives like the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, and the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria, how their goals were translated into built terms, and how these earlier experiences differ from ongoing experiences with Chinese expertise and aid.

 

Gerda Henkel Foundation Grant (2022)

National Endowment for the Humanities (2021) 

Salomon Award, Brown University (2017)

Brown University Global Experiential Learning and Teaching Grant for Winter 2018 (2017)

Graham Foundation Research and Development Grant (2017)

SAH/Mellon Author Award (2016-2017)

Gerda Henkel Foundation, Germany, Publication Grant ( 2016)                                                                 

Collaborator, Insight Grant, Social Sciences Research Council of Canada,

with Robert Jan van Pelt, University of Waterloo  (2016-2019)                                                                  

Visiting Scholar, School of Architecture & Planning, MIT (Fall 2015)                                                           

American Postdoctoral Fellowship, AAUW (2015-2016, declined)                                                         

External Faculty Fellowship, Center for the Humanities, Wellesley College (2015-2016)                                   

Cogut Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, Brown University (Spring 2016, deferred to Spring 2017)                     

Humanities Research Fund Award, Brown University (Fall 2014)                                                                

Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University, Faculty Fellow (2014-2015)                 

Mellon Foundation Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative Grant (2014-2017)                               

Humanities Research Fund Award, Brown University (Fall 2013)                                                                 

Jeffrey Cook Award, Int’l Assoc. for the Study of Traditional Environments (Fall 2012)              

Academic Project Grant, Ithaca College (Spring 2012)                                                                                   

Summer Grant for Faculty Research, Ithaca College (2011)                                                                         

Travel Grant, Gerda Henkel Foundation, Germany  (2011)                                                                             

Support Grant, Canadian Center for Architecture (2009)                                                             

Opler Membership Grant, Society of Architectural Historians (2009)                                                     

 

Monographs:

Africa’s Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage (Princeton University Press, 2025).

Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Germany (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017).

 

Edited Volumes:

Routledge Companion to Critical Approaches in Race and Architecture (co-edited with Felipe Hernandez) (Routledge, 2025).
German Colonialism in Africa and its Legacies: Architecture, Art, Urbanism & Visual Culture (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023).

 

Journal Articles:

"From Postcolonial to Decolonial Architectural History: A Method," kritische berichte: Zeitschrift für Kunst und Kulturwissenschaften 3 (2021): 16-38. 

“Invisible Woman: Reclaiming Josephine Ifueko Osayimwese Omigie in the History of the Zaria Art Society and Postcolonial Modernism in Nigeria.” African Arts 52, no. 2 (2019): 66-79.

“Networks and Systems as Tools of Empire in Post-Independence Nigeria: The International Institute for Tropical Agriculture.” Perspecta 52 (2019): 263-77.

“Armchair Safaris: Representations of African Cultures in Zoos,” Architectural Theory Review, v. 20. n. 20 (2016): 1-16.

“Introduction” [with David Rifkind], Journal of Architectural Education, theme issue, “Building Modern Africa,” co-edited by Itohan Osayimwese and David Rifkind, v. 68, n. 2, (Oct 2014): 156-158.

“Prolegomenon to an Alternative Genealogy of German Modernism: German Architects’ Encounters with World Cultures ca. 1900,” Journal of Architecture, v. 18, n. 6 (Dec 2013): 835-874.

“Architecture and the Myth of Authenticity During the German Colonial Period,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, v. 24, n. 2 (May 2013): 41-52 (Winner, Jeffrey Cook Award 2012).

“Pietism, Colonialism, and the Search for Utopia: Pietist Space in Germany and the Gold Coast.” Thresholds 30 (Fall 2005): 74-79.

 

Book Chapters:

"From Postcolonial to Decolonial Architectural History: A Method.” In Architectures of Colonialism: Constructed Histories, Conflicting Memories, 15-40. Eds. Vera Egbers, Christa Kamleithner, Özge Sezer, Alexandra Skedzuhn-Safir. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2024.

“Afro-Caribbean Migration and Detention at Ellis Island.” In Architecture against Democracy: Aesthetics, Nationalism, and Power, 140-62. Eds. Reinhold Martin and Claire Zimmerman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2024.

"From Travel to Colonialism: Art and the German Colonies.” In German Colonialism in Africa and its Legacies: Architecture, Art, Urbanism & Visual Culture, 37-68. Ed. Itohan Osayimwese. New York: Bloomsbury, 2023.

“Introduction: Seeing and Building German Colonialism.” In German Colonialism in Africa and its Legacies: Architecture, Art, Urbanism & Visual Culture, 1-36. Ed. Itohan Osayimwese. New York: Bloomsbury, 2023.

“Writing and Building History: African Architecture between Germany and its Colonies.” In Picturesque Modernities: Architectural Studies in Global regionalism (1890-1950), 165-92. Ed. Michael Falser. Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2023.

“ ‘Never Expect Power Always’: The National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), Power Supply, and the Built Landscape in Lagos, Nigeria.” In Cities of Light: A History of Urban Illumination. Ed. Dietrich Neumann and Sandy Isenstadt (forthcoming 2014, Routledge).

“Architecture with a Mission: Bamum Autoethnography During the Period of German Colonialism." Invited contribution to German Colonialism Revisited: African, Asian, and Oceanic Experiences, ed. Nina Berman, Klaus Mühlhahn, and Patrice Nganang. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013, pp. 18-38.

"Demystifying Colonial Settlement: Building Handbooks for Settlers in the German Colonies, 1904-1930." In German Colonialism, Visual Culture, and Modern Memory, ed. Volker Langbehn. New York: Routledge, 2010, pp. 124-147.

 

Reviews:

Review of Michelle Apotsos, Architecture, Islam, and Identity in West Africa: Lessons from Larabanga (New York: Routledge, 2016), caa.reviews, forthcoming 2017.Review of Michelle Apotsos, Architecture, Islam, and Identity in West Africa: Lessons from Larabanga (New York: Routledge, 2016), caa.reviews, forthcoming 2017.

“Slavery at Monticello: Life and Work on Mulberry Row,” Multimedia Review, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, v. 75, no. 3 (Septemper 2016): 383-385.

Review of Urban Design, Chaos, and Colonial Power in Zanzibar by William Cunningham Bissell, International Journal of Middle East Studies v. 46, n. 3 (2014), 613-615.

 

Other:

“Werkbundaustellung 1914 with ‘Colonial Compound’ and ‘Congo Village’, Köln Postkolonial: ein lokalhistorisches Projekt der Errinnerungsarbeit, http://www.kopfwelten.org/kp/, (forthcoming, 2016).

 

John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study, Programming Grant (2024)

Brown Arts Institute Rolling Grant (2024)                                                                         

Gerda Henkel Foundation, Research Grant (2022)

Princeton University Press Global Equity Grant (2022)

National Endowment for the Humanities grant with David Rifkind et al (2021)

Schelling Prize for Architectural Theory, Schelling Foundation, Karlsruhe, Germany (2020)

Bruce Goff Chair of Creative Architecture, University of Oklahoma (2020)

New Directions Fellowship, Andrew Mellon Foundation (2020)

Norman Freehling Visiting Fellowship, Michigan Institute for the Humanities (2019, declined)         

Early Career Research Achievement Award, Brown UniversitySalomon Award, Brown University (2018)

Brown University Global Experiential Learning and Teaching Grant for Winter 2018 (2017)

Graham Foundation Research and Development Grant (2017)

SAH/Mellon Author Award (2016-2017)

Joukowsky Institute Faculty Fellow, Brown Unviersity, 2016-2018

External Faculty Fellow, Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Wellesley College, 2015-2016

Visiting Scholar, School of Architecture & Planning, MIT, Fall 2015

Cogut Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, Brown University, Spring 2016 (deferred until Spring 2017)

American Postdoctoral Fellowship, AAUW, 2015-2016  (declined)

Haffenreffer Faculty Fellow, Brown Unviersity, 2014-2015

Mellon Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative grantee, 2014-2017

Humanities Research Fund Award, Brown University, Fall 2013

Jeffrey Cook Award, Int’l Assoc. for the Study of Traditional Environments, Fall 2012

Travel Grant, Gerda Henkel Foundation, Germany, 2011

Support Grant, Canadian Center for Architecture, 2009

Society of Architectural Historians

College Art Association

Arts Council of the African Studies Association

International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments

I teach courses on the global history of architecture, modernity and architecture, the politics of the built environment, African and African diaspora architecture and urbanism, modern architecture in global perspective, architectural theory.