Marylebone entrance, University of Westminster
Photograph: Department of Architecture, University of Westminster
Supercrit on Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette, University of Westminster, 14 October 2005
Photograph: Department of Architecture, University of Westminster
University of Westminster Donates Staff Support to EAHN
Beginning in November 2009, the EAHN can draw on additional staffing donated by the University of Westminster, London. Two postdoctoral fellows in the Westminster Department of Architecture, Davide Deriu and Josephine Kane, will together contribute about ten hours per week to tasks for the EAHN as the organization’s new Westminster Editorial Assistants. Deriu and Kane will be responsible for development of the extensive collection of weblinks to be placed on the EAHN website, as well as other projects relating to the website, the EAHN Newsletter, and development of the organization’s future journal. The EAHN is extremely grateful for this generous support and is pleased to introduce its new supporting institution and editorial assistants to EAHN members.
The Department of Architecture at the University of Westminster forms part of the larger School of Architecture and the Built Environment, one of comparatively few in Britain which spans the full range from design to construction to transport and urban development policy. Westminster began life in the mid-nineteenth century as Britain’s first polytechnic, famous for its role in the early development of flight, cinema and professional training; as such, it is mentioned in George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman (1903). The Department of Architecture has long been one of the leading centers for architectural education, with a particular interest in architectural history and theory. Well-known architectural history tutors in the past have included Alan Colquhoun, Demetri Porphyrios, Robin Evans and, for a short while, Daniel Libeskind. While these scholars tended to focus on questions of discourse and representation, today their counterparts like Murray Fraser, Jeremy Till and Kester Rattenbury adopt approaches that are consciously blended with cultural studies to look at issues such as post-colonial theory, power structures and media analysis in architecture. As such, the wide-ranging approach of the European Architectural History Network, both in terms of its geographical spread and the kinds of subjects its members are involved in, meshes closely with the aims of the Westminster Department of Architecture and so it is delighted to offer support to the organization.
Dr. Davide Deriu was educated at the Politecnico di Torino and University College, London, where he completed his Ph.D. He has worked as an architect in Germany, and taught in Turkey at METU in Ankara, as well as at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He has been a visiting scholar in residence at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and a research fellow at Yale University's Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London. He is currently at work on a book about the impact of aerial photography on urban visions in early twentieth-century Europe. He is also jointly organizing a major international conference on “Emerging Landscapes” to be held at the University of Westminster in June 2010.
Dr. Josephine Kane earned a Ph.D from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, in 2007, and has recently joined the Department of Architecture at Westminster as a British Academy Post Doctoral Fellow. Over the next three years, she will be studying how the experience of mass pleasure in Britain has been commodified and defined by the architectural landscape. Her interdisciplinary approach incorporates cultural geographies, histories of tourism and entertainment as well as architectural history and theory. Outside academia, she has worked as a live interpreter for Historic Royal Palaces, and a freelance education practitioner in schools and heritage sites across the UK.
