Syracuse Sun

As part of their 2024 grant cycle funding ideas to expand architecture and design, the Chicago-based Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts recently announced 56 new grants, totaling $519,500, to individuals, including two School of Architecture faculty members: Distinguished Professor Lori A. Brown and Assistant Professor Jess Myers.

Selected from nearly 600 submissions, 84 individuals—including established and emerging architects, artists, curators, designers, filmmakers, historians and writers—were given the prestigious annual grants for their publications, research, exhibitions, films, site-specific installations and digital initiatives that expand contemporary ideas of architecture through innovative interdisciplinary work on design and the built environment.

“Congratulations to both Professor Brown and Assistant Professor Myers,” says Michael Speaks, dean of the School of Architecture. “These awards are among the most prestigious in architecture and the fine arts and will help these professors and indeed our school to advance scholarship and research in our discipline.”

Lori A. Brown

Lori A. Brown has been awarded funding along with Karen Burns, senior lecturer in architectural design at the University of Melbourne. Their project is titled “Women Architects and Global Solidarity Across the Cold War Divide: The International Union of Women Architects (UIFA), 1963–1993.”

Feminist architectural history has frequently been organized around individual figures or national historiographies but rarely around transnational networks connecting women architects into a global feminist movement. This project uncovers a key transnational women’s organization: UIFA was founded in 1963 to narrate a new global history of women’s organizing in architecture. Spanning sites from Berlin to Seattle during 1963–93, UIFA’s membership crossed 90 countries. The organization attracted powerful patrons such as the Empress of Iran and Princess Grace of Monaco. This geographic reach offers insight into how women architects organized across the Cold War divide and how nation-states mobilized UIFA global conferences for political aspirations.

“We are honored that our research project is receiving support from the Graham Foundation,” says Brown. “This grant recognizes the innovative quality of the project which locates women architects in a transnational organization advocating for women’s professional equity. This research will redraw the map of women’s architectural history to understand diverse places shaping architecture in the second half of the 20th century.”

Jess Myers

Urbanist Jess Myers has been awarded funding for Odes[s]a, season four of her narrative documentary podcast “Here There Be Dragons.” The podcast explores gaps between residents’ security concerns and governance responses visible in policy and design decisions.

After covering New York, Paris, and Stockholm in previous seasons, season four focuses on Odesa, Ukraine's diasporic communities navigating safety questions. Inspired by medieval cartographers' depictions accompanied by "here be dragons," symbolizing uncertainty systems defining known territory borders—the podcast engages with residents on security narratives perpetuated by urban policies over time.

“The Graham Foundation’s support allows me to refine research on Odesa during a particularly difficult period,” says Myers. “I am immensely grateful for funding that will allow me to pursue rigor deserving residents’ stories.”

The 2024 grantees join a worldwide network supported by Graham Foundation over its 68-year history. The Foundation has awarded more than $44 million directly supporting over 5,100 projects globally.