Taubman College Ph.D. in Architecture News
The following news items highlight recent doctoral student milestones for the architecture program.
Hennebury completes Ph.D.
Deirdre Hennebury successfully defended her doctoral dissertation in architecture on January 13, 2014. Her dissertation on the development of the Tate museum “franchise” in the United Kingdom since the late nineteenth century sheds new light on the role of museums in postmodernism, and includes valuable new work on James Stirling’s designs (built and unbuilt) for the Tate complex at Millbank in London. Deirdre also has a Certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Michigan, and has worked intensively with Museum Studies faculty throughout her time at U-M.
Kickert takes faculty post at University of Cincinnati
Conrad Kickert (candidate, Ph.D. in Architecture) will join the faculty of the University of Cincinnati as Assistant Professor of Urban Design, beginning January 2015. In his dissertation research, Conrad has focused on pedestrian experience in urban cores, particularly the relationship between buildings and public space from four perspectives: time, place, effect, and response.
Niloufar Emami won Helen Wu award by Rackham
Helen Lun Chen Wu, born on May 9, 1920 in Fuzhou, China, received her B.S. degree in chemistry from West China Union University in 1942. After WWII, Helen Wu went to Canada on a scholarship, where she received her M.S. degree in biochemistry from the University of Saskatchewan in 1948. Helen Wu then accepted the offer of a Barbour Scholarship from the University of Michigan, and traveled to Ann Arbor, where she enrolled in the Department of Biological Chemistry doctoral program. Dr. Chung Wu and his children have honored her life and career by establishing an award in her name to help future generations of graduate students who have been nominated for a Barbour Scholarship.
Grabowska awarded Rackham Fellowship and Sweetland Fellowship
Sam Grabowska (candidate, Ph.D. in Architecture) has been awarded a Rackham Pre-Doctoral Fellowship and a fellowship to the Sweetland Writing Institute to continue work on her dissertation, “Architecture of the Other Side: The Secret Spaces and Human Traces of Unauthorized Border-Crossing in the Arizona Borderlands.” The Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship supports outstanding doctoral students who have achieved candidacy and are actively working on dissertation research and writing, especially those that are unusually creative, ambitious and risk-taking. In addition, Sam has received support to attend the Dissertation Writing Institute at the Sweetland Center for Writing in North Quad.
Keslacy is chosen as a 2014-15 Humanities Fellow
Elizabeth Keslacy (candidate, Ph.D. in Architecture) has won a fellowship at the U-M Institute for the Humanities for the 2014-15 academic year, during which she will continue work on her dissertation on the history of the concept of style. The Institute promotes interdisciplinary research and discourse in the humanities and the arts. Its function is to form an intellectual community of faculty and graduate student fellows from various departments who will spend a year in residence in the Institute pursuing their research.
McCulloch Receives ACLS/Mellon Fellowship
Mick McCulloch has been selected as one of 64 scholars to receive an American Council of Learned Societies Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship. The fellowship supports a year of research and writing to help advanced graduate students in the humanities and related social sciences in their last year of dissertation writing and is made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Mick’s dissertation is entitled, “Building the Working City: Designs on Home and Life in Boomtown Detroit, 1914-1929.”
Keslacy and Kiely present in New Zealand
Elizabeth Keslacy and Joss Kiely traveled to Auckland, New Zealand to deliver papers at the annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ), July 2-5, 2014. Keslacy’s paper, “A Question of Category at the Birth of the Cooper-Hewitt, 1963-1976” examines the museum’s transition from a decorative arts to a design museum, and in particular the role of the Hans Hollein-designed inaugural exhibition, “MANtransFORMS.” Kiely’s paper, “Architectural Aerialism: the Translation of Aviation in Late Modern Architecture, 1956-75” examines the early work of Japanese-American architect Minoru Yamasaki and the way it registers and responds to formal and spatial developments brought about by the Jet Age of aviation and air travel.
