Buell Dissertation Colloquium 2025

The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture invites submissions for its biennial Dissertation Colloquium, to be held March 28–29, 2025. Doctoral students from diverse institutional and disciplinary backgrounds, working on dissertation topics related to architecture and the built environment in the Americas, are invited to apply. The plural, Americas, is meant to expand the Center’s mission in two ways: first, to include comparative thought about building practices across the hemisphere and the world; and second, to suggest that there are several Americas within the United States. Students whose dissertations focus on other geographies will be equally considered if comparative perspectives with hemispheric contexts are made explicit. Cross-disciplinary approaches are especially encouraged.

Up to eight doctoral students from universities worldwide will be selected to present a 20-minute talk drawn from their doctoral research. The presentation should be based on a self-contained chapter or portion of the student’s dissertation research and should not be an overview or synthesis of the dissertation as a whole.

Requirements
Students must be enrolled in an accredited doctoral program and have completed their coursework plus at least one year of dissertation research. Submissions must include a complete draft of the intended presentation, together with illustrations. Submissions must also be accompanied by the following: a cover sheet specifying the student’s institutional affiliation, postal and e-mail addresses, and phone number; a 150-word abstract describing the paper’s relationship to the overall dissertation topic; and a brief statement from the student’s principal adviser certifying the applicant’s status (stage of completion) in the doctoral program. 

Submission
Please send electronic submissions (no larger than 3MB) in PDF format to buellcenter@columbia.edu, by Monday, December 16, 2024. Papers selected for presentation will be announced by the end of January, 2025.

The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture is part of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. For a quarter of a century, the Buell Dissertation Colloquium has been a vibrant forum for new work by emerging scholars.

For further information, write buellcenter@columbia.edu or consult buellcenter.columbia.edu.