Buell Postdoctoral Fellow, 2026–28

Buell Center Research and Teaching Fellowships are intended to give recently graduated postdoctoral fellows a chance to advance their own research, gain teaching experience, and take part in the ongoing intellectual life of the Buell Center, the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), and Columbia University—over the course of twenty-one months (two academic years and one intervening summer). Fellows will be co-hosted by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities.

Buell Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2027–29

The Buell Center at Columbia University seeks a recent doctoral recipient to join its intellectual community for a 21-month fellowship (two academic years and an intervening summer) as a Buell Center Research and Teaching Fellow. Ideal candidates will be scholars of the built environment who are beginning an academic career of research and teaching, with a growing record of original writing intended for peer-reviewed publication. Complementary experience, such as design, curatorial, critical, or fourth-purpose organizing work, is welcome but not required.

The 21-month fellowship will begin September 1, 2027, and is intended to give Fellows a chance to advance their own research, gain teaching experience, and take part in the ongoing intellectual life of the Buell Center; the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP); and Columbia University. The Fellow will be co-hosted by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities.

The Fellow is expected to be in residence at Columbia for two academic years and will remain a Fellow in the intervening summer, but is not required to be in residence. In addition to presenting their research once yearly in a formal setting, Fellows will teach at least one semester as faculty in GSAPP’s architectural history survey course, “Questions in Architectural History” (QAH). The Fellow may also propose to teach a separate course within GSAPP based on their own research.

The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture is a separately endowed entity within Columbia GSAPP, which sponsors interdisciplinary research through projects, workshops, public programming, publications, and awards.

Qualifications

A recent PhD degree in Architecture or a related field is required by the start date of the appointment. PhDs granted within the last three years prior to the appointment start date are acceptable.

Successful candidates:

must have a PhD conferred within three years of—and no later than—the start date of the appointment, i.e., the date of the degree should be between September 1, 2024, and September 1, 2027.
must demonstrate an interest in pushing the disciplinary or methodological norms of architecture and related fields of the built environment
should have a growing record of bridging across disciplines in the humanities or social sciences
may be focused on any historical period and geographic area in their research.

Application Instructions

Interested applicants should submit: a CV; a cover letter; a research statement (1,500 words), dissertation abstract (150 words), one-sentence project description, one to three images (on one page); a teaching statement (500 words); at least one writing sample; and the names of three references. Recommendation letters will be solicited for shortlisted applicants.

Please visit our online application site at https://apply.interfolio.com/189588 for further information about this position and to submit your application. Review of applications will begin on October 16, 2026, and will continue until the position is filled.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: My PhD is in another field in the humanities or social sciences; does not having a PhD in architecture limit my chances?
A: Applicants with backgrounds in affiliated fields are very welcome to apply.

Q: Does this postdoc focus on American architecture only?
A: Those working on topics related to architecture and the built environment in the Americas are invited to apply. 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.

Q: If I am defending my dissertation in the spring or summer immediately before the fellowship begins, am I eligible to apply?
A: Yes, applicants are only required to complete their doctoral program before the beginning of the postdoc (September 1, 2027); all those who have defended and graduated by this time are eligible.

Q: I completed my PhD more than three years before the start date (for the 2027-29 cycle, September 1, 2024 and earlier), but exceptions that ‘reset the clock’ are sometimes granted for parental leave, etc.; is this true at Columbia?
A: No, unfortunately, Columbia University guidelines do not afford any exceptions.

Q: It looks like the deadline is October 16 but says applications will still be accepted on a rolling basis after that. Should I still submit after October 16?
A: Applications received after October 16 may be reviewed as the ongoing process allows; the only way to ensure an application is reviewed is to submit by October 16.

Q: How long should the cover letter be?
A: Cover letters should be 2 pages maximum; please address letters to the Selection Committee.

Q: The application asks for a dissertation abstract; should this be the abstract of my completed dissertation, or of the project I envision for the Buell fellowship?
A: This should be the abstract of the completed (or nearly complete) PhD dissertation. An extensive bibliography is not required

Q: What is the purpose of the image component of the application?
A: The 1-3 images included in your application help illustrate or contextualize the proposed research. If a fellow is selected, the images may be used to announce their research.

Q: For the Questions in Architectural History (QAH) class, should I provide a detailed course outline as part of my application?
A: No, the faculty for QAH will collaboratively construct the syllabus for a given semester. Therefore, no details are expected at this stage.

Q: Is there a word count for the writing sample, and can I upload one of my recently published academic articles?
A: Yes, a published article can serve as your writing sample; please include publication/citation information. While there are no word limits, samples should be sized reasonably to allow timely review by the committee.

Q: Will a job talk be part of the fellowship application process?
A: No; applicants who reach the second round are invited to meet the committee for a brief virtual interview.

Q: Do recommendation letters have to be submitted before I complete the application?
A: No, letters of recommendation are only requested from applicants who move on to the interview stage. Please include details for your 3 anticipated recommenders as requested in the Interfolio application.

Q: Is the compensation for the full duration of the fellowship, or is it an annual amount?
A: The compensation of $75,000 is the salary amount per 12 months, and the fellowship is 21 months in total.

Q: Have previous candidates for this fellowship experienced visa issues, and if so, did that impact their participation?
A: The International Students and Scholars Office (ISSO) at Columbia and the Buell Center collaborate on visa paperwork to support fellows. Please direct further visa-related questions to ISSO.

Q: Are there any other stylistic or formatting requirements?
A: No additional requirements. Applicants should consider labeling each page with their name and the application component (e.g. Firstname Lastname Cover Letter) in both the filename and the margins. Please double-check PDF settings before submission to avoid technical issues (e.g. password-protected files that the committee cannot read; or oversize files with uncompressed images). If applications are printed out during the review process, it will be on 8.5 x 11” US letter-sized paper (215.9 x 279.4 mm, nearest similar size is A4).

Please direct any further questions to [email protected]

Buell Postdoctoral Fellow, 2026–28

Frederik Braüner
2026-28 Buell Research and Teaching Fellow

Project: "Building a Modern High North: The Colonial and Transnational Construction of Modernity in the Arctic"

While at the Buell, Braüner will work on his book project, Building a Modern High North: The Colonial and Transnational Construction of Modernity in the Arctic. This work, which builds on Braüner's dissertation, examines how architecture and urban planning functioned as tools of colonial expansion and welfare governance across the Global High North, tracing the transnational collaborations among colonial administrations in Sápmi, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Nunavut, and Alaska to reveal how colonial legacies of modernity continue to shape contemporary life in this rapidly changing region

Braüner will begin at Columbia on September 1, 2026. As part of the Buell Fellowship, he will join a cohort of fellows at the The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, as well as the faculty team teaching the GSAPP’s landmark course, “Questions in Architectural History.”

Biography

Frederik Braüner is an architect, editor, and historian of modern and contemporary architecture. His research focuses on the overlapping histories of colonialism, welfare ideologies, and high-modernist spatial practices, particularly in the Arctic and the broader Circumpolar North. Braüner holds a PhD in Architecture with a designated emphasis in European and Scandinavian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley; an MA in Political Architecture from the Royal Danish Academy; and a BA in Art History from the University of Copenhagen. His research has been supported by several awards and fellowships, including from the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, the Arcus Foundation, and the Society of Architectural Historians. Braüner previously worked as an architect and editor for the architectural journals Arkitekten and Room One Thousand. His writing has appeared in academic and popular journals such as Architecture and Culture, Magasin for Bygningskunst og Kultur, and Information.

Image 1: A zoom-in of one of these map-fragments showing the depopulated settlements in the Upernavik region of Greenland. Frederik Braüner, 2026.

Image 2: A photo of a Danish-built housing block in Maniitsoq, Greenland from 1972. Frederik Braüner, 2024.

Image 3: A photo of a Danish-built housing block in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands from 1972. Frederik Braüner, 2024.

Image 4: A drawing of the Norwegian State Housing Directorate’s 1948 blueprint no. 216 for a standardized single-family house in Sápmi. Illustration: Norwegian State Housing Directorate, 1948.

Buell Postdoctoral Fellow, 2025–27

Chelsea Spencer
2025-27 Buell Research and Teaching Fellow

Project: "The Contract, the Contractor, and the Capitalization of American Building"

While at the Buell, Spencer will work on her current book project, The Contract, the Contractor, and the Capitalization of American Building. This work, which builds on Spencer’s dissertation, traces how building became contracting in the United States during the nineteenth century. General contractors dismantled the world of craft building and reconstituted it as the modern construction industry, thus laying the foundations of modern American architecture by operating at the inflection point between projection and materialization, paper and concrete. General contractors offered their investment-minded clients a completed building, for a fixed price, on a guaranteed schedule. Unearthing the ideological and institutional foundations of today’s construction industry, the study reveals how nineteenth-century thinking about freedom, value, and risk shaped the architectural building contract and the limits of the architecture profession.

Spencer will begin at Columbia on August 1, 2025. As part of the Buell Fellowship, she will join a cohort of fellows at the The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, as well as the faculty team teaching the GSAPP’s landmark course, “Questions in Architectural History.”

Biography

Chelsea Spencer is an architectural historian and editor. Her research examines the practice and production of architecture—broadly construed—in the Atlantic World during the long nineteenth century, with a particular focus on architecture’s interactions with technical media, law, and economic life. Spencer received a PhD in History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture from MIT, an MDes from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a BA from Emory University. Before joining Columbia she was a CERCL postdoctoral fellow in architecture at Rice University. She has taught writing at the Pratt Institute and was previously the managing editor of Log. Her writing can be found in Grey Room, Places, and Log, among others.

Exchange room in the Master Builders’ Association of Boston. Engraving after a rendering by John A. Fox (architect of the renovated exchange building), published in “The Boston Builders’ Exchange,” Carpentry and Building 12, no. 7 (July 1890): 168.

Buell Postdoctoral Fellow, 2024–26

Sonali Dhanpal
2024-26 Buell Research and Teaching Fellow

Project: “Caste and the City”

While at the Buell, Dhanpal will draw from her dissertation to work on “Caste and the City: Spatial Politics in Colonial and Princely Bangalore,” a project that examines the persistence of caste in urban South Asia. Destabilizing the myth of monolithic colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent, the book will offer a close spatial analysis of a princely capital city, Bangalore, in the critical decades between 1880 and 1920. Far from disappearing, caste power hardened onto new regimes of property, labor, and control. By focusing on housing and on land reform that came after pressure mounted for the exhibition of monumental colonial/princely power, the study shows how rentier capital materialized caste in built form by analyzing the third plague pandemic, the rise of urban landed castes in state politics, and missionaries as unlikely Dalit salvationists. Dhanpal will also begin work on her second project, “Empire Comes Home: Housing Race Relations in Britain,” which intends to bring colonial legacies of the welfare state into conversation with the vast scholarship on the architect-planners who led the postwar construction boom in Britain (1950-1980).

Dhanpal will begin at Columbia on September 1, 2024. As part of the Buell Fellowship, she will join a cohort of fellows at the The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, as well as the faculty team teaching the GSAPP’s landmark course, “Questions in Architectural History.”

Biography
Sonali Dhanpal is an architect, a built heritage conservationist, and a historian of modern architecture and urbanism who specializes in histories of colonialism, capitalism, and inequality from the 1800s to the present. She earned a Bachelor’s in Architecture from the Dayananda Sagar School of Architecture, an M.A. in Conservation Studies from the University of York, and a PhD in Architectural History and Theory from Newcastle University. Her research has been supported by a number of awards and fellowships, including from the Institute of Historical Research at the School of Advanced Studies, University of London; the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art; the Society of Architectural Historians; and the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. Her work has appeared in the journal Planning Perspectives and the edited volume New Planning Histories.

The Superintendent's Bungalow that operated as the Headquarters of the Mysore Mines, Dec 1894. Picture Courtesy: LLewlyn Hancock, Clare Arni/Henry Martin Collection.

The ‘princely’ ruled Bangalore City while the “British” controlled the Civil and Military. Courtesy: P.R Cadwell, Report on the Outbreak of Plague in the Civil and Military Station, Bangalore 1898-99, India Office Records, The British Library.

Buell Postdoctoral Fellow, 2023–25

Maura Lucking
2024-25 Buell Research and Teaching Fellow

Project: “Settler Campus”

While a Buell Fellow, Lucking will work on a book-length architectural history of the public college movement in the 19th century United States. The project is based on her dissertation, “Settler Campus: Racial Uplift, Free Labor, and Land Tenure in American Design Education, 1866-1929,” which examines three school typologies—the land grant college, the industrial institute, and the Indian boarding school—through a settler colonial framework. Lucking innovatively shows the role played by architecture, industrial design, and design pedagogy in rights-based legal outcomes for various racialized groups that were educated in these institutions. By emphasizing students’ self-sufficiency and manual labor, and often by involving them in campus construction projects, architectural education aligned design outcomes with narratives of respectability, freedom, and individual property. Lucking uncovers the links between this school-building habitus and social and economic ideals, from the immediate aftermath of the US Civil War, when social cohesion was understood to be under threat, into the 20th Century when educational models were exported to new geographies in Liberia and the Philippines.

Lucking will begin at Columbia on January 1, 2024. As part of the Buell Fellowship, she will join a cohort of fellows at the Society of Fellows/Heyman Center, as well as the faculty team teaching the landmark course, “Questions in Architectural History” at GSAPP.

Biography
Maura Lucking is an historian of architectural modernism and empire in the 19th- and 20th-Century United States. She received her PhD in Architecture from UCLA in 2023, and is currently Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Her work has been supported by the Winterthur Museum, Huntington Library, Graham Foundation, the Society for Architectural Historians, and the Getty Research Institute, and been published in Grey Room, Getty Research Journal, Thresholds, Faktur, and Journal of Architectural Education.

Students and instructors in a staged publicity photograph for donors to Tuskegee Institute, 1909 (LOC)

The Temple Hoyne
Buell Center
for the Study of
American Architecture
at Columbia University

Fellowship

Prize

Buell Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2027–29

Qualifications

Application Instructions

Frequently Asked Questions

Buell Postdoctoral Fellow, 2026–28

Buell Postdoctoral Fellow, 2025–27

Buell Postdoctoral Fellow, 2024–26

Buell Postdoctoral Fellow, 2023–25