We are delighted to be welcoming five keynote speakers to the conference, and will update further here as we receive confirmation. 

Nzinga Mboup

Nzinga is a registered Senegalese architect who studied at the University of Pretoria and worked for two years in Johannesburg, before continuing with a Masters in Architecture at the University of Westminster in London. She then worked for three years at Adjaye Associates, predominantly on the IFC headquarters in Dakar. In 2019, she co-founded WOROFILA where she led various earth projects such as the Sendou home, the Ngor house and the Goethe-Institut in collaboration with Kéré Architecture. Nzinga has been a researcher for the African Futures Institute since 2022 and has co-authored two research projects: DAKARMORPHOSE and HABITER DAKAR, both of which centre Dakar’s urban history and raising today’s critical conditions. 

Jaideep Chatterjee

Jaideep “Swiss army knife” Chatterjee An obsessive compulsive multi-disciplinarian, Jaideep is an architect, a historian and an anthropologist. With a doctorate in History of Architecture and Urbanism and another one in Socio-cultural Anthropology from Cornell University, Jaideep’s academic enquiries traverse questions of design, visual culture, techno-politics, social formation of expertise, popular culture and nationalism. His research on architects, and design as a form of knowledge in post-colonial India has been published with prestigious academic presses worldwide. Jaideep has taught at several universities, including Cornell, The University of Cincinnati, and the University School of Architecture and Planning, Delhi. In addition to his academic pursuits, Jaideep also actively collaborates with designers, architects, artists and filmmakers to work on many interdisciplinary projects. In his free time trains his pack of street dogs along with his German shepherd Norbu. He is also a sci-fi nerd who loves to cook and deconstruct everything, from restaurant menus to milk cartons.

Kiel Moe

Kiel Moe, FAIA, FAAR, is a practicing architect, researcher, and author. In recognition of his design and research endeavors, he was awarded a Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Helsinki, the Gorham P. Stevens Rome Prize in Architecture at the American Academy in Rome, the Architecture League of New York Prize, and the American Institute of Architects National Young Architect Award. He has published several books on architecture including Empire, State & Building; Wood Urbanism: From the Molecular to the Territorial; Insulating Modernism: Isolated and Non-Isolated Thermodynamics in Architecture; and Convergence: An Architectural Agenda for Energy.

Andrew Ballantyne

Andrew qualified and practised as an architect before taking up research, starting with a PhD on Richard Payne Knight and the theory of the picturesque. He has worked with archaeologists surveying a Byzantine settlement in Greece, and more recently on architectural theory.

Andrew is author and editor of several books. Architecture: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2002) has been translated into 23 languages including Chinese, Greek and Hungarian. It is also available in an American edition with many more illustrations Brief Insights: Architecture (Sterling,2010). Key Buildings from Prehistory to the Present (Laurence King 2012) is avilable in English and Portuguese. Deleuze and Guattari for Architects (Routledge 2007) is available in English, Korean and Turkish, and will soon be available in French.

The Production Studies Group

The Production Studies Group are 4 researchers from the Translating Ferro / Transforming Knowledges project – a Brazil/UK collaboration using the work of Sérgio Ferro to establish the new field of Production Studies. We are all concerned with the invisibility of the construction site in architectural education. Tilo Amhoff is Senior Lecturer in Architectural Humanities at the University of Brighton. Lara Melotti is a PhD researcher at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Katie Lloyd Thomas is Professor of Theory and History of Architecture and Will Thomson is a Research Associate, both at Newcastle University.