harvard phd art history

History of Art and Architecture

Undergraduate Program

The History of Art and Architecture concentration offers training in the historical interpretation and critical analysis of the visual arts and architecture. Encompassing material from the widest range of geographic and historical origins, art history is itself a multifaceted discipline embracing many different methods, perspectives and interests. Instruction in critical analysis is aided by the history of art and architecture department’s partnership with one of the world’s greatest teaching museums, comprising the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Sackler Museums, offering students a unique opportunity of first-hand study of original works of art in many media.

The graduate program in the Department of History of Art and Architecture offers a program of instruction that prepares students for teaching the history and theory of art at the college level, for museum work, and for independent research and writing. The department offers instruction in the following broad fields of the history of art and architecture: African, Greek and Roman, East Asian, Islamic, Latin American, Medieval/Byzantine, Modern (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), Modern (twentieth century) and Contemporary, Renaissance and Baroque (fifteenth through eighteenth centuries), South Asian.

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• PhD Program in History of Art and Architecture and Middle Eastern Studies

The joint program in History of Art and Architecture and Middle Eastern Studies is designed for students interested in enriching their program of study for the PhD in History of Art and Architecture with firsthand knowledge about the Middle East based on literacy in its artistic traditions. As a student in an interdisciplinary program you are a full member of the Department of the History of Art and Architecture cohort, but also have an intellectual home at CMES and access to CMES faculty, facilities, and resources.

Students in the joint PhD Program in History of Art and Architecture and Middle Eastern Studies fulfill all the  requirements for the PhD in History of Art and Architecture  in addition to the language and area studies requirements established by the Committee on Middle Eastern Studies.

Language Requirements

Each student must demonstrate a reading knowledge of English and a European language (French, German, Russian, or Italian). Students must also demonstrate a thorough knowledge of a Middle Eastern language. The expectation is that the student learns the languages necessary to teach and work in his or her chosen field, chosen in consultation with their advisor. Language requirements are fulfilled by a departmental examination that must be passed by the end of the fourth term.

Program of Study in History of Art and Architecture and MES

In the first two years, students must take a minimum of sixteen half-courses. Required courses in the first year include "HAA 310—Methods and Theory of Art History,” and one seminar in another period of art history. In the second year, students must take “HAA 300—Reading and Research,” and one seminar in another aspect of Middle Eastern Studies.

Students must take one course in at least three fields of art/architectural history other than their own, one of which must be in Western art. Non-field-specific courses may be taken in place of one of the three field requirements. In non-field-specific courses, a topic should be studied which promotes extra diversification methodologically and geographically.

A list of current Middle East–related courses is available on this site at the beginning of each semester; the History of Art and Architecture Department courses are available at my.harvard.edu .

General Examinations and Qualifying Paper

Students take a general examination of four parts: two in Near Eastern art (either different periods or different techniques, the scope being determined by the student’s committee), one in another period of the history of art and in Near Eastern studies, and a language examination in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, or an ancient Near Eastern language consisting of a translation (with dictionary) of one or two passages from a list of sources provided at least a year before the examination, and of a commentary. Detailed information about departmental examinations can be found on the Department of the History of Art and Architecture's website.

Students propose and write a Qualifying Paper in the spring term of their second year. Specific details and deadlines for this requirement are listed on the Department of the History of Art and Architecture’s website.

Dissertation

In the third year doctoral students identify a three-member dissertation committee and topic. The final prospectus should be approved within three months of the general examinations in order for progress toward the degree to be considered satisfactory. Students ordinarily devote three years to research for and writing of the dissertation, and complete it prior to seeking full-time employment. The dissertation will be judged according to the highest standards of scholarship, and should be an original contribution to knowledge and understanding of art. More details on the requirements for the dissertation are available on the Department of the History of Art and Architecture’s website.

Timeline for Student Progress and Degree Completion

• Coursework: One to three years.
• Examinations: General exams must be passed by the end of the third year of study, or sixth term in residence.
• Dissertation Prospectus: Must be approved no later than three months after passing the general examinations.
• Dissertation Defense and Approval: The candidate’s dissertation committee decides when the dissertation is ready for defense. The doctorate is awarded when the candidate passes a defense of the dissertation.
• Graduation: The program is ideally completed in six years.

For more details on these guidelines, see the Middle Eastern Studies section of the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Harvard Griffin GSAS) Policies site and the Department of the History of Art and Architecture’s information for prospective PhD students . Admissions information can be found in the Applying to CMES section of this site and on the Harvard Griffin GSAS website .

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Ph.d. in history of art and architecture and middle eastern studies.

The joint program in History of Art and Architecture and Middle Eastern Studies is designed for students interested in enriching their program of study for the Ph.D. in History of Art and Architecture with firsthand knowledge about the Middle East based on literacy in its languages and an understanding of its political and economic realities, its culture and traditions.

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Fellowships

• Created by Marcus Mayo , last modified by Sean A Fisher on Jan 05, 2024

Graduate students in the Ph.D. program in the History of Art and Architecture are supported by a number of fellowships offered by the Harvard Griffin GSAS as well as various research and area studies centers at Harvard University. The fellowships are offered for different purposes—e.g. summer pre-dissertation research and fieldwork, language study, dissertation support on and off campus—and for varied periods of time. There are also many external fellowships to which students may apply across the years of their degree program. The following list, organized by G-year, describes the fellowship opportunities and their requirements. G1-3 students should discuss their fellowship applications with the Director of Graduate Studies and Graduate Coordinator; G4+ students should develop a plan each academic year for internal and external fellowship competitions and discuss their applications with the primary adviser and other members of their dissertation committee. Advance planning enhances the quality and strength of the fellowship application and facilitates the preparation of letters of recommendation and other supporting documentation. Developing skills in applying to fellowships will enhance professional development during the years of your graduate study and throughout the remainder of your career as a scholar.

For general information on internal and external fellowships visit the Harvard Griffin GSAS Fellowships Page as well as the Fellowships and Writing Center . An additional resource is offered by the GSAS which maintains the CARAT Database for Fellowships and Grants .

G1 & G2

Pre-dissertation summer fellowships.

The GSAS Graduate Society Summer Predissertation Fellowships are for outstanding graduate students in the Humanities and Social Sciences to pursue summer language study or preliminary dissertation research or fieldwork.

The GSAS Summer School Tuition Fellowships are intended to enable doctoral students to engage in language study at the Harvard Summer School in Cambridge, either to prepare for their department foreign language exam, or to prepare for language needs related to the dissertation. Please note: This opportunity ordinarily is for use in the summer following the G1 or G2 or G3 year, but under special circumstances students in later years may apply. Note as well, that this fellowship does not apply to Harvard Summer School programs that are conducted abroad; it is exclusively for Harvard Summer School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Both fellowships involve a two-stage application involving a ranking by the Faculty of the HAA Department and then review by the Griffin GSAS Fellowships Office. 

Applications are submitted in CARAT for departmental review by  FEBRUARY 15.

Once reviewed, the applications are automatically forwarded to the Griffin GSAS for their review in early February.

Notification for this fellowship is typically late-April.

For information about application contents and requirements, please visit the Harvard Griffin GSAS Fellowships Office website.

Information about other Harvard summer fellowships supporting fieldwork and language study through various research centers are listed at the above website. The following centers have a record of supporting students in History of Art and Architecture:

• Asia Center
• Center for European Studies, Minda de Gunzburg
• Center for Hellenic Studies
• Center for Middle East Studies
• David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
• Dumbarton Oaks
• Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
• Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (I Tatti Fellowships)
• Hutchins Center for African and African American Research
• Korea Institute
• Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies
• South Asia Institute, Lakshmi Mittal Family

Kennedy, Knox, and Sheldon Travel Fellowships

The Committee on General Scholarships invites Harvard graduate and professional schools to nominate candidates who wish to apply for support to conduct research or study abroad for the academic year. Funding supports students in their G4 year. The competition is open to current Harvard graduate students or students who will graduate from one of Harvard’s professional schools in the current academic year.

This fellowship involves a two-stage application: first, a ranking by the HAA Department; second, review and final selection by the GSAS Fellowships Office. 

Applications are submitted in CARAT for departmental review by NOVEMBER 15.

Once reviewed, the applications are automatically forwarded to GSAS for their review in early December.

Notification for this fellowship is typically in mid-April.

Fulbright US Student Program

GSAS students are encouraged to apply for the  Fulbright US Student Program  for study or research in over 140 countries worldwide with a focus on cultural exchange through direct interactions with members of the host community. The fellowship is offered by the Institute of International Education (IIE) on behalf of the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. 

Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program (DDRA)

The Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Program is designed to contribute to the development and improvement of the study of modern languages and area studies in the US by providing opportunities for doctoral students to conduct research abroad. Research projects should focus on one or more of the following geographic areas: Africa, East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, South Asia, the Near East, Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and the Western Hemisphere (excluding the United States and its territories). Research is allowed in multiple countries.

For information about application contents and requirements, please visit the Fulbright-Hays page on the Harvard Griffin GSAS Fellowships Office website .

Porter Travel Award

The Porter Travel Awards are dedicated funds to support research and travel in the fourth year. The Porter is authorized by the University from year to year.

Pre-Dissertation Summer Fellowship

See G1 & G2: Pre-Dissertation Summer Fellowship

Merit and Term Time Research Fellowships

A semester award that allows outstanding GSAS students to focus their time on research, fieldwork, and writing. These fellowships are for outstanding GSAS students in the humanities, social sciences, and in specifically designated areas of study in the natural sciences and mathematics. Students must have passed Generals and have an approved dissertation prospectus at the time of nomination, or no later than the beginning of the semester when the award is taken. Notification for this fellowship is typically mid-April.

Harvard Griffin GSAS: Summer, Research and Travel Fellowships

External Fellowships Requiring Departmental Nomination

Center for advanced study in the visual arts (national gallery of art), kress foundation, dedalus foundation, and graham foundation.

Successful applications to these fellowship competitions are typically those made by students who have completed at least one year of fieldwork and research and who can demonstrate advanced progress toward the dissertation and its completion.

To be considered for these fellowships, G4+ students should submit the following materials by September 27 10:00 a.m. by email or WeTransfer as one pdf to the Graduate Coordinator:

• Departmental cover form
• Dissertation Proposal
• Critical Bibliographic Essay
• Research to Date
• Tentative Schedule
• Faculty Letter of Recommendation (sent directly to Graduate Coordinator)

Recommendation letters should be sent directly to the Graduate Coordinator. One is required ON the submission deadline. The Faculty of the HAA Department reviews the applications and determines the nominees to the external fellowships based on dissertation progress, quality of application, and suitability to the individual fellowships.

The final application deadline (if nominated) for the CASVA (National Gallery of Art) is November 15 and all material must be submitted online. If you are nominated for the Kress, Dedalus, or Graham Foundation grants you will collect and send the application yourself. One nomination is possible for each CASVA fellowship and two for the Kress Institutional*; one each for Dedalus and Graham.

*Please note : If one of your recommenders for the Kress Institutional Fellowship is on the selection committee at the institution for which you are applying, they will be recused from the committee during deliberations about your application.

Sample winning fellowship applications of all types are archived for reference in the Graduate Program Coordinator's office.

• National Gallery Predoctoral Dissertation Fellowship Program
• Kress Foundation History of Art Institutional Fellowship Program
• Dedalus Dissertation Fellowship
• Graham Foundation Carter Manny Award

Helen Frankenthaler Fund for Graduate Research The Department of History of Art and Architecture offers one annual fellowship to support doctoral dissertation research in the history of modern art. Students should have completed at least one year of fieldwork and research and be able to demonstrate advanced progress toward the degree. Priority will be given to G5+. The fellowship supports research-related costs, technology and equipment, tuition, travel, and housing. The level of award annually is $21,000. There is no residential requirement.

To be considered for these fellowships, G5+ students should submit the following materials by April 30 10:00 a.m. by email or WeTransfer as one pdf to the Graduate Program Coordinator:

• Dissertation Proposal (1,000 words)
• Critical Bibliographic Essay (500 words)
• Research to Date (500 words)
• Tentative Schedule (1 page)
• Faculty Letter of Recommendation (to be sent directly to the Graduate Coordinator)  

About Helen Frankenthaler “Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), whose career spanned six decades, has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. She was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters and is widely credited for playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, she expanded the possibilities of abstract painting, while at times referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways. She produced a body of work whose impact on contemporary art has been profound and continues to grow.” From Helen Frankenthaler: A Brief Biography https://www.frankenthalerfoundation.org/helen/biography

Dissertation Completion Fellowships

Eligible students in the humanities and social sciences are guaranteed a GSAS dissertation completion fellowship (DCF) between the G4 and G7 years and must apply for the DCF in advance of the dissertation completion year.

Harvard Griffin GSAS: Dissertation Completion Fellowships

Additional Fellowships and Internships

Aga khan program for islamic architecture.

The Aga Khan Program Fellowship opportunities are available for AKPIA HAA students, Joint CMES/HAA students, and Joint GSD/HAA students. Students outside these areas with interests in the history of Islamic Art and Architecture are welcome to apply, but preference is given to those within HAA.

In general, the deadline is March 1 of each year.,

Proposal and budget should be submitted directly (by email) to the program administrator in the Aga Khan Program.

Harvard University Gordon Parks Foundation Scholarship  

This annually awarded scholarship supports a Harvard undergraduate or graduate student who is researching a topic that explores the relationship between race and aesthetics, racial equity, social justice, and visual culture in American life toward preparation for a senior thesis project or a doctoral thesis in the B.A. and Ph.D. degree programs offered by the Departments of African and African American Studies and the History of Art and Architecture (separately or jointly). Generally, these funds would be used by an undergraduate during the summer months—to support the research fieldwork of a rising senior—and by a graduate student at any time in the academic year. Proposals to work in the archives of the Gordon Parks Foundation in New York are also welcome.  

The scholarship honors the legacy of photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks and acknowledges the importance of visual literacy and the nexus of race and art, fostering new academic inquiry by students registered for degree programs offered by the College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.  

The Gordon Parks Foundation has generously indicated scholarship support at the level of $7,500 per annum. The full amount will be awarded to one student in each award cycle.

Application:

Applications should comprise: 1. 1,000-word project description; 2. schedule and itinerary (1 p.); 3. budget (1 p.); and, 4. a letter of recommendation about the proposed research project from a faculty adviser and/or professor who has taught the applicant. The 2022 deadline is April 11th with the recipient announced by April 25th. The application should be submitted as a single pdf, with the recommendation letter—sent separately by the recommender—to Marcus Mayo, Undergraduate Coordinator, Department of History of Art and Architecture (marcus_mayo@ fas.harvard.edu ).

The scholarship-winning student will be featured on the Gordon Parks Foundation website as well as the websites and social media accounts of the Departments of AAAS and HAA.

Harvard Art Museums

Curatorial divisions and departments in the Harvard Art Museums offer opportunities for part-time employment. Many students serve as curatorial assistants, assisting the preparation of installations of the permanent collections or special exhibitions, participate in public programs, or conduct research on objects in the museums’ collections. These positions are administered by the Harvard Art Museums and opportunities vary from year to year. Formal applications for internships in the Harvard Art Museums are usually made in April for the following academic year. Annual opportunities for museum internships are communicated to eligible graduate students (G3+) by the Graduate Coordinator. Graduate students may choose to pursue a museum internship in lieu of support from working as a teaching fellow, though the HAA Department recommends that students find balance between the two to maintain breadth and diversity in their professional formation.

External Predoctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowship Competitions (History of Art and Architecture; Humanities)

The following fellowships in history of art and architecture and the humanities support various fields, purposes, and career stages, both predoctoral and postdoctoral. We welcome any additions to this list.

• Albright (W.F) Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem
• Alexander von Humboldt Foundation , Sponsorship Programmes
• American Academy in Rome
• American Academy in Rome, Rome Prize
• American Antiquarian Society, Fellowships
• American Associaiton of University Women
• American Council of Learned Studies
• American Councils for International Education, Research Abroad
• American Historical Association , J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship in American History
• American Research Center in Egypt
• American Research Center in Sofia Foundation
• American Research Center in Turkey
• American School of Classical Studies at Athens
• Amon Carter Museum of American Art
• ANAMED, Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations
• Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship
• Archaeological Institute of America
• Art Institute of Chicago
• Barakat Trust
• Bard Graduate Center
• Belgian American Educational Foundation
• Cambridge University, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Fellowships
• Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Art (CASVA)
• Center for British Art, Yale University
• Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
• Center for Italian Modern Art
• Chateaubriand Fellowship Foundation—Humanities and Social Sciences
• Clark Art Institute Fellowships
• College Art Association Fellowships
• Council for European Studies at Columbia University
• Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) Fellowships
• Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
• Dartmouth College, Leslie Center for the Humanities , Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships
• Dedalus Foundation
• Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte
• Folger Shakespeare Library, Fellowships
• Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship
• Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS)
• Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington, Research Fellowships
• Frick Collection
• Fulbright US Student Program Fellowship
• Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship
• George A. and Eliza Howard Foundation Fellowships
• Georgia OKeeffe Museum Dissertation and Postdoctoral Fellowships for the Study of American Modernism
• German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
• Getty Foundation Pre- and Postdoctoral Fellowships
• Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Fellowships
• Goethe Institut Postdoctoral Fellowship at Haus der Kunst
• Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
• Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation
• Harvard University, Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Villa I Tatti), Fellowships
• Haverford College, John B. Hurford '60 Center for the Arts and Humanities , Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship
• Hilla Rebay International Fellowship: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
• Huntington Fellowships
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers History Center , Fellowship in Electrical History
• John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress , Chairs & Fellowships, Scholars in Residence
• Kress Foundation History of Art Institutional Fellowships
• Lemmermann Foundation Scholarship Award (for study in Rome)
• Leonard A. Lauder Fellowships for Modern Art (MMA)
• Lewis Walpole Library Fellowship (for research at Yale University)
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowships in American Art *On your application, please list the Graduate Program Coordinator's email for the "Institutional Statement of Support"

• Medieval Academy of America
• Medieval Academy of America - Baldwin Fellowship
• Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowships
• Mellon/SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF)
• Metropolitan Museum of Art—Art History Fellowships
• Middlebury College Language Fellowships
• Morgan Library and Museum, Drawing Institute
• Museum of Modern Art
• National Academies , Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowships
• National Science Foundation , Science, Technology, and Society (STS)
• New England Regional Fellowship Consortium
• Newberry Library Fellowships
• Philadelphia Museum of Art, American Art and Barra Fellowships
• Princeton University, Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, Fellowships
• Rijksmuseum Fellowship Programme
• Rubenianum Fellowship
• Science History Institute, Fellowships
• Smithsonian American Art Museum Fellowships
• Smithsonian American Art Museum Luce Curatorial Fellowship
• Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Society for the History of Technology , Hindle Fellowship
• Society of Architectural Historians
• Stanford University, Center for East Asian Studies , Chinese Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship
• Terra Foundation
• Thoma Foundation Research and Travel Awards in Spanish Colonial Art
• UC Humanities Research Institute , Grants
• UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
• UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies, Postdoctoral Fellowships
• University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS) , Funding Opportunities
• University of Pennsylvania Wolf Humanities Center , Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities
• Walters Art Museum
• Wesleyan University Center for the Humanities , Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
• Winterthur Research Fellowships
• Wolfsonian-Florida International University Fellowships
• Yale Institute for Sacred Music Interdisciplinary Fellowship
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Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies  

The Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies (AFVS) at Harvard offers a graduate program in Film and Visual Studies leading to a PhD.

The Department also offers a secondary field in Film and Visual Studies for students already admitted to PhD programs in other departments in the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

The study of film at Harvard functions within the multi-disciplinary examination of audio-visual experience. From Hugo Münsterberg's pathbreaking forays into the psychological reception of moving images and Rudolf Arnheim’s seminal investigations of "visual thinking" to Paul Sachs’s incorporation of film into the academic and curatorial focus of the fine arts at Harvard and Stanley Cavell’s philosophical approaches to the medium, Harvard has sustained a distinguished tradition of engaging cinema and the cultural, visual, spatial, and philosophical questions that it raises. With their emphases on experimentation in the contemporary arts and creative collaboration among practitioners and critics, the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies (AFVS) and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts provide a singular and unparalleled site for advanced research in Film and Visual Studies. The program aims to foster critical understanding of the interactions between the making of and thinking about film and video, between studio art, performance, and visual culture, and between different arts and pursuits whose objects are audio-visual entities. The Carpenter Center also supports a lively research culture, including the Film and Visual Studies Colloquium and a Film and Visual Studies Workshop for advanced doctoral students, as well as lecture series and exhibitions featuring distinguished artists, filmmakers, and scholars.

Interdisciplinary in its impetus, the program draws on and consolidates course offerings in departments throughout the Faculty of Arts and Sciences which consider film and other arts in all their various countenances and investigate the place of visual arts within a variety of contexts. Graduate students may also take advantage of the significant resources of the Harvard Film Archive (HFA), which houses a vast collection of 16mm and 35mm film prints as well as rare video materials, vintage film posters, photographs, and promotional materials. The HFA furthers the artistic and academic appreciation of moving image media within the Harvard and the New England community, offering a setting where students and faculty can interact with filmmakers and artists. In early 2003, the HFA opened a new Conservation Center that allows the HFA conservator and staff to accession new films as well as to preserve its significant collections of independent, international, and silent films.

Students and faculty in Film and Visual Studies are also eligible to apply to the Harvard Film Study Center for fellowships which are awarded annually in support of original film, video, and photographic projects. Established in 1957, the Film Study Center provides production equipment, post-production facilities, technical support, and funding for nonfiction works that interpret the world through images and sounds. Among the many important films to have been produced at the Film Study Center are John Marshall's The Hunters (1956), Robert Gardner's Forest of Bliss (1985), Irene Lusztig's Reconstruction (2001), Ross McElwee's Bright Leaves (2003), Peter Galison and Robb Moss’s Secrecy (2008), Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor's Sweetgrass (2009), Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki’s Foreign Parts (2011), Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s Leviathan (2013) and De Humani Corporis Fabrica (2022), Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez’s Manakamana (2014), Mati Diop’s Atlantiques (2019), Ernst Karel and Veronika

Kusumaryati’s Expedition Content (2020), and Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós’ Dry Ground Burning (2022).

Images:  Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine  (2005), directed by Peter Tscherkassky, from a print in the collection of the Harvard Film Archive.

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Graduate Contacts

Laura Frahm Director of Graduate Studies 

Emily Amendola Graduate Coordinator Film and Visual Studies Program (617) 495-9720 amendola [at] fas.harvard.edu  

FAQs about the Graduate Program

My native language is not english; do i have to take the an english language proficiency exam.

Adequate  command of spoken and written English  is essential to success in graduate study at Harvard. Applicants who are non-native English speakers can demonstrate English proficiency in one of three ways:

• Receiving an undergraduate degree from an academic institution where English is the primary language of instruction.*
• Earning a minimum score of 80 on the Internet based test (iBT) of the ...

When is the application deadline for admission to the Ph.D. program in Film and Visual Studies?

December 15, 2023

Where can I obtain an admissions application?

Applications are found on the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences website ( https://gsas.harvard.edu/admissions/apply ). 

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• International (9)
• Latin America (10)
• Medieval and Renaissance (9)
• Mediterranean (1)
• Middle East (18)
• Modern Europe (11)
• South Asia (6)
• United States (21)

PhD Student Bios

In addition to their studies, doctoral candidates are involved in many aspects of the school. Among other activities, they hold Research or Teaching Fellowships and organize speaker series, conferences, and journals.

Students generally take courses their first two years, and are engaged in research and teaching for at least two more years. After their fourth year, students may or may not remain in residency; many travel to pursue their research, either in the US or abroad.

Click here for recent PhD graduates.

Salma’s research is supported by the Agha Khan program at Harvard University, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR), and Harvard University’s Center for African Research. She holds a Master of Science degree in urban development and planning from the Bartlett, University College London and a Bachelor of Architecture from the American University in Cairo. Before starting her Ph.D. at Harvard university, she worked as an urban planner in Cairo in collaboration with several NGOs, international development organizations, governmental agencies and local municipalities.

[email protected]

Hugo Betting  is an architect and a third-year Ph.D. student. His research explores the entanglement of architecture, science and environment in history, through texts and objects in the nineteenth and twentieth-century North Atlantic.

Integrating architectural history into the framework of cultural history, his current work examines how technology bears both practical and symbolic functions in nature’s exploitation, imitation, reproduction, and “recovery”; how “nature” was used as a moral, social, racial, organizational, and formal reference in the production of the built environment; or, in other words, how nature, human representations, and human productions interact.

His work on the idea of nature’s recovery at the Crystal Palace was presented at the annual Mahindra Humanities Center Graduate Student Conference at Harvard University. His forthcoming paper on the role of natural formations at the Riverside settlement in Illinois will be presented this November at the Symposium of Urban Design History and Theory, held in Delft.

Prior to arriving at Harvard, Hugo completed a Licence’s and a Master’s Degree from Paris La Villette School of Architecture and worked for various architecture studios in Paris. In 2021 and 2022, he received the Arthur Sachs Scholarship.

William Conroy  is a PhD candidate in urban studies and planning at Harvard University. His ongoing dissertation project articulates a theorization of the role of urbanization in the reproduction of capitalist society, doing so with reference to the history of American anti-imperial thought after 1928.

William has presented his academic work at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers and at the Urban Affairs Association Conference, among many other fora. He took his PhD qualifying exams under the supervision of Neil Brenner, Katrina Forrester, and Walter Johnson, with his major exam developing a “reproductionist approach” to the historical geographies of capital, and his minor exam engaging the topic of race and the urban process in the imperial United States after 1870. His own research on those themes has appeared or is forthcoming in leading journals of urban studies, geography, and socio-spatial theory, including Antipode, Environment and Planning A, Theory, Culture & Society, and more. (For more information and publication details, please visit: https://harvard.academia.edu/WilliamConroy)

William has a BA (summa cum laude) from Northwestern University, an MPhil (with distinction) from the University of Oxford, and an AM from Harvard University, where he was named a Presidential Fellow. He is a Research Affiliate at the University of Chicago’s Urban Theory Lab. Prior to graduate school, William worked for several environmental organizations, including as a Princeton in Asia Fellow.

Yazmín M. Crespo Claudio , a Puerto Rican architect and educator, is co-founder/director of taller Creando Sin Encargos (tCSE), a Cambridge/San Juan-based collective working towards socio-spatial design for urban justice since 2012. Crespo-Claudio is a Lecturer and Ph.D. candidate in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning at Harvard University. She completed a secondary field in Film and Visual Studies and is working on a certificate in Latin American Studies. Her scholarship addresses the relationship between architecture, education, media, and territory, focusing on pedagogical experiments of architecture in Latin America and the Caribbean. She holds a Master in Design Studies in History and Theory of Architecture from Harvard GSD, a Master of Architecture in Urban Design and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, and a Bachelor’s in Environmental Design from the Universidad de Puerto Rico’s School of Architecture.

Before coming to Harvard, Crespo-Claudio was the Chair of the Department of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Interior Design and Assistant Professor at the Universidad Ana G. Méndez in Puerto Rico. She has also taught at Harvard GSD; New York Institute of Technology; Universidad Politécnica de Puerto Rico; Elisava Escola Universitària de Disseny i Enginyeria de Barcelona; Universidad de Puerto Rico; Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico where she was a Professor and Coordinator of the Bachelor of Arts in Design; and Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. Her writings have been published in, among others,  De Arquitectura, Bitácora Urbano Territorial, Arquine, Polimorfo, ACSA and UIA proceedings, in the books Aprender Arquitectura by Arquine, Repository: 49 Methods and Assignments for Writing Urban Places by COST Action CA181126, and Placemaking with Children and Youth by Louise Chawla et al (co-authored), among others.

She has presented her work at several venues including the CAA Annual Conference, LASA Conference, Docomomo International Conference, CEISAL International Conference, Jornadas de Investigación Género, Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo FADU UBA, World Congress of Architects UIA, Participatory Design Conference, ACSA International Conference , among others. Her work has been exhibited at the 13 th International Architecture Biennale São Paulo (tCSE), Participatory Design Conference Newcastle upon Tyne (tCSE), Storefront for Art and Architecture NYC (tCSE), Kirkland Gallery Cambridge, AIA Puerto Rico , Museu Marítim de Barcelona , and the curation of several art, architecture, and design exhibits. Crespo-Claudio’s work has been recognized with various awards including the  Edita Technical Chamber of Greece at the XIX Congress UIA, and as an Associate Designer at Perkins Eastman the World Architecture Award 2009,  and the  AIA NY Merit Award  for the TKTS Booth in New York.

Crespo-Claudio is the recipient of the American Association University Women (AAUW) Dissertation Fellowship 2023-24. In 2022, She was awarded the Harvard Frederick Sheldon Fellowship and the Jorge Paulo Lemann Fellowship, and the Racial, GSD Equity, and Anti-Racism Fund for Archive IN/IN: International Intersectional Feminism in 2023. Her research has been supported by the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and Harvard GSD.

Yazmín M. Crespo Claudio

Samira holds a Master of Architecture from University of Toronto and a Master of Science from University of Michigan. She joined the design discipline after five years of medical studies in Iran. Prior to joining Harvard, Samira taught at University of Miami and practiced in Toronto. Her writings have appeared in Winterthur Portfolio (The University of Chicago Press), Thresholds Journal (MIT Press), Informa , Inflection Journal , and Centre , among others. She has exhibited her work at MIT (Keller Gallery), Fashion Art Toronto, University of Texas at Austin, and Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University.

Taylor holds a Bachelor of Architectural Studies and M.Arch from the University of Waterloo and an MA in Urban Planning from Harvard University. Taylor was a lecturer at Northeastern University School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs (2021–23) where she has led graduate classes on urban history, planning theory, and local climate governance. She has editorial experience at Log journal, The Architectural Review, and Harvard GSD Publications. Taylor has previously received a Canada Weatherhead Doctoral Fellowship, a Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative Doctoral Fellowship, and a SSHRC Canada Doctoral Fellowship. She is currently a Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Phillip frequently writes about architecture, art, and design. His writing has appeared in  Harvard Design Magazine, Volume, Metropolis, The New York Times, and other publications.  Recent projects include a genealogy of “creaturely” architecture in  Inscriptions: Architecture Before Speech,  edited by K. Michael Hays and Andrew Holder (Harvard University Press), and The Art of Joining: Designing the Universal Connector  (Leipzig: Spector Books), a pocketbook anthology of original research on the architect Konrad Wachsmann. He is a member of the editorial board of  Architect’s Newspaper  and editor of New York Review of Architecture.  In 2020, Phillip co-founded  a83 , a gallery and organization in Soho, New York, with a three-part mission to exhibit, publish, and promote experimental projects in architecture, art, and design.

Phillip completed his Master of Architecture degree at Princeton University, where he graduated with the certificate in Media + Modernity, and received the School of Architecture History and Theory Prize. He received a Master’s degree from Harvard University in 2019. He also holds a professional Bachelor of Architecture degree from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was awarded the Louis F Valentour Fellowship, the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation Prize for Architecture History, and the AIA Henry Adams Medal. He has practiced in numerous roles with architecture firms and organizations in the United States and Europe, including OMA/Rem Koolhaas, MOS Architects of New York, and C-Lab at Columbia University. In 2018, Phillip was a fellow of the Bauhaus Global Modernism Lab in Dessau, Germany. In 2019, he received a Graham Foundation grant to support his work on an English-language translation of Nicolas Schöffer’s 1969 urban manifesto  La ville cybernétique.

[email protected] phillipdenny.com

Hayley’s current research examines developments in early modern theatre architecture and stage design, considering such topics and themes as the ways in which architecture and architectural thinking were transformed by the dramatic arts and became increasingly tied to other modes of rhetorical address practiced on stage; cultures of secrecy and rivalry characteristic of the profession of ‘scenic designer’ and among practitioners of esoteric theatre-technological knowledge; yet undecided relations between the role and reputation of stage managers called “il corago” or impresari and military commanders responsible for overseeing dynamic theatres of war; scenographic theory and its precarious relationship to practice; aesthetic and spatial programs for auditoria; and the pan-European legacy of architectural dynasties active in theatre and set design, including the families Galliari, Quaglio, and Galli da Bibiena.

Hayley’s interest in theatre architecture began following her visit to the Teatro Goldoni in Florence, Italy, in 2015. Equally inspired by the writings and life of the theatre’s namesake, that of the Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni, Hayley was inspired to complete her master’s thesis at McGill University on the role and representation of a topic much debated in Goldoni’s creative work: Commedia dell’arte , being a form of Renaissance comic theatre with crude plots and characters like the gnocchi-loving scoundrel Punch ( Pulcinella ). While completing her degree, Hayley spent time as a Research Library Reader at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California, where she consulted copious visual materials from both the Italian Theatre Prints Collection and the Stage and Theatre Design Collection. Prior to matriculating to Harvard in 2020, Hayley completed a three-month research residency at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s Institute of Theatre and Opera in Venice, Italy.

For the 2023-24 academic year, Hayley will fulfill the role of MDes Research Tutor in the Narratives Program and will partake in a digital exhibition project with the Harvard Art Museums. The exhibition, which aims to shed light on the material culture of the Crusades, will feature over one-hundred individual objects from the Museums’ collections.

Tamer is an associate member of the Spatial Ethnography Lab, a research collaborative co-founded and led by anthropologist Vyjayanthi Rao. He is also a research member of Neil Brenner’s Urban Theory Lab at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, in which he works on the spatial and political dimensions of extractive economies and large-scale water and energy infrastructure in the restructuring of North Africa. Tamer previously worked as a research assistant in the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure, focusing on water and energy infrastructure in the US. Furthermore, reflecting his shared interests in critical geography and environmental anthropology, he was awarded the Penny White summer grant to conduct fieldwork in Egypt, investigating the infrastructural landscapes of coastal engineering works in the Nile Delta.

Tamer holds a Master in Design Studies in Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), a Master of Landscape Architecture from FH Anhalt, Germany; a Post-professional Certificate in GIS and Environment from Salford University, UK; and a Bachelor of Architecture from Faculty of Fine Arts, Egypt. Tamer has previously worked as landscape architect in Germany and Egypt, and as an environmental researcher at the Center for the Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage, Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

Before joining the PhD program, between 2020 and 2021, he held the position of Director of Urbanism of the Ministry of Housing of Peru, where he led the development and passing into law of the 2021 National Urban Reform. Prior to this, Jose Carlos worked as an associate and senior associate at the Lima office of Baker McKenzie law firm. He has also served as legal advisor to the World Bank and to the Metropolitan Institute of Planning of Lima.

He has worked as professor of Property Law at the Catholic University Law School and has also taught seminars on urbanism at the schools of architecture of Catholic University and the National University of Engineering in Lima, Peru.

Jose Carlos holds a Master in Urban Planning from Harvard University and is also a licensed lawyer graduated from the School of Law of Catholic University of Peru.

Morgan holds an MPhil in Architecture and Urban Studies with distinction from the University of Cambridge and a bachelor’s degree in International Politics and Security Studies from Georgetown University. Formerly a journalist and editor, her work has appeared in The Nation, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Mic, Popular Mechanics, Ploughshares, and Smart Cities Dive.

Charlie holds a Master in Design Studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a B.A. in Art History and English from Williams College. Prior to earning his Masters degree, Charlie worked as a strategist at the New York design consultancy 2×4 before joining the GSD’s Office for Urbanization (OFU). There, he contributed to design research projects on mass transit, climate change adaptation, and new town planning. With Charles Waldheim and OFU, Charlie co-authored 50 Species-Towns , a 2022 publication that presents a speculative approach to rural urbanization in China. He also produces the GSD’s Future of the American City conversation series. Charlie lives in Somerville, MA with his wife Catherine and son Paul.

His recent publications include a paper (with Neil Brenner) on the relationship between processes of extended urbanization, neoliberal agro-industrial restructuring, and the political ecologies of emergent infectious disease; an essay on work and the labor process in the global construction industry; and a paper (with Ayan Meer) on the conceptual convergences between critical agrarian studies and urban theoretical scholarship on planetary urbanization. His broader interests include geographical political economy, political ecology, critical urban theory, state theory, and the historical geography of capitalism from the nineteenth century to the present.

Swarnabh is a Research Affiliate at the Urban Theory Lab, formerly based at the GSD, currently based in the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. His research has been supported by the Harvard GSAS Graduate Society, the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, the Weatherhead Center, and the IJURR Foundation. His work has appeared in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Dialogues in Human Geography, Urban Studies, and The Avery Review, among other publications.

Swarnabh holds a Master of Philosophy in Urban Studies (with distinction) from the University of Cambridge where he studied as a Bass Scholar and a Master of Architecture from Yale University. Before coming to Harvard, he worked for several years at Diller Scofidio + Renfro in New York City where he was involved in projects spanning art, media, and architecture.

www.swarnabhghosh.com

Hannah holds a Master of Arts with distinction in the Archaeology of Buildings from the University of York and a Bachelor of Arts in History from Williams College. Before her PhD, she was a resident fellow at the Preservation Society of Newport County, where she researched patron-architect relationships in late-19 th century America. She also previously worked as a consultant for nonprofit arts and cultural organizations across the U.S. Her dissertation research has been supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Renaissance Society of America, the Yale Center for British Art, and the North American Conference on British Studies. She is currently the Robert H. and Clarice Smith Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture Engineering from The University of Jordan, where she was awarded the Issa Hassan Abu Al Ragheb Award for Academic Excellence. She also holds a Master of Arts in Architectural History with distinction from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. Her master’s thesis focused on the architect’s agency and the politics of knowledge in the “digital generative architecture” discourse.

She has worked as a visiting lecturer at Al-Zaytoonah University in Jordan, where she taught a class on the theories and applications of Building Information Modeling (BIM). She was also a research consultant at Studio-X Amman, run by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and the Columbia Global Centers, where her research focused on the history of urban planning in the city of Amman and the different digital technologies used in mapping the urban change and their influence on the ways the city has been represented and narrated. In 2019, Hanan participated in the Global Modernism curatorial research residency at the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, Germany, and edited Handle with Care: Unpacking a Bulky Table, an anthology that looks at a table designed by Marcel Breuer as a case study, investigating the incorporation of everyday objects into the design canons. Hanan’s doctoral research has been supported by the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The Weatherhead Center, and The Charles Babbage Institute. In 2022, she was named ACADIA (The Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture) inaugural cultural history fellow.

Photo credit: Portrait by Enrique R. Aguilar for MENTES vol. 2, 2022.

Gabriel was Assistant Curator for the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2021. Past curated exhibitions include “Walls of Air” (the Brazilian Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale) and “Housing+” (the 3rd Biennial Exhibit of the MIT L. Center for Advanced Urbanism). His recent books include: The World as an Architectural Project (MIT Press, 2020); 8 Reactions for Afterwards (RioBooks, 2019); and Walls of Air: Brazilian Pavilion 2018 (Bienal de São Paulo, 2018).

Graduated from the Master of Science in Urban Design program at MIT, Gabriel has held research positions at the School of Architecture and Planning, the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism and the Senseable City Lab, and taught graduate-level seminars, workshops and studios at the same school.

For his PhD at Harvard, Gabriel is looking at the history of urbanization in the Amazon basin. His research interest suggests that the way politics and power got spatialized in that region has defined the framework through which we conceive of and relate to the Amazon, and that a new reading of it can, in turn, inform the way we understand and address broader urbanization processes as well as the responses from our design disciplines.

[email protected] gabrielkozlowski.com tomorrowanew.org

Anny has a background and strong interest in archives, knowledge infrastructures, and material history. Her professional experience includes work in special collections libraries, including Frances Loeb Library’s Special Collections and Houghton Library, where she supported their exhibitions, communications, and public programs. Prior to her graduate studies, she worked on communications and publications at Snøhetta, and has been a writer and editor at various architecture and landscape architecture firms for over 6 years. She has been an invited speaker in courses at the Syracuse University School of Architecture, Yale School of Architecture, Harvard GSD, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and has edited and been published in publications including the New York Review of Architecture , Failed Architecture , POOL , Constructs , and volume 1 . She holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Brown University.

Sunghwan earned his Master in Design Studies (MDes) degree in Energy and Environment from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2021. He received the Dean’s Merit Scholarship during his study and his master’s thesis, entitled Controlling Wind Pressure around Building by Multiangle Ventilation Louver for Higher Natural Ventilation Potential , was awarded to Daniel L. Schodek Award for Technology and Sustainability.

Before joining the Harvard community, Sunghwan double majored in Interior Architecture & Built Environment and Architecture & Architectural Engineering at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, Sunghwan worked as a construction engineer at Samsung Construction and Trading company for six years. His invaluable experiences with building an airport in Mongolia and constructing a residential complex in Seoul profoundly shaped his research ideas and motivated him to contribute to the field of architecture.

In his dissertation, Adam researches the mid-twentieth century entanglement of wartime policies, government agencies, private sector collaborations, and mass media technologies that led to the production of military “mock villages.” Constructed by the US Army Corps of Engineers in collaboration with architects, landscape architects, and Hollywood scenographers, mock villages were—and remain—elaborate stage sets where the US military rehearses combat operations before conducting them in actual theaters of war. His dissertation focuses on the Pacific Theater and especially the western United States where, in the 1940s, mock villages emerged as a key military technology in the war between the US and Japan. A goal of this research is to demonstrate how the invention of a novel form of architecture—the military mock village—coincided with the production of new forms of violence and destruction that persist today. In addition to the Safra Center, his project has been supported by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Graham Foundation.

Before coming to Harvard, Adam practiced for nearly a decade in several design offices including Olson Kundig Architects, Allied Works Architecture, and Snøhetta, where he was the director of post-occupancy research. His writing can be found in Thresholds , The Avery Review , and Log, among others.

Sarah holds both a Master of Architecture and a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, where the focus of her research was conflict between the collective desire to memorialize and the protective impulse to stigmatize, sanitize, or obliterate sites with traumatic or violent associations.

Prior to her enrollment at Harvard, Sarah was a public historian for the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission where she wrote about lesser-known episodes in New York City’s past: female reformers’ creation of the first purpose-built kindergarten in Brooklyn, the adaptation of Civil War-era manufactories by Abstract Expressionist artists for use as studios, and Redemption-era racism through the lens of Tin Pan Alley’s 1890s-1910s popular music businesses.

Before joining the Ph.D. program, Miranda taught advanced studio courses as a Visiting Professor of Practice at Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture. At Virginia Tech she also developed a course on social mapping and GIS with a regional focus in Appalachia, which received support and recognition from other departments at the university and won the ACSA / Temple Hoyne Buell Center’s 2023 Course Development Prize in Architecture, Climate Change, and Society.

Before teaching, she worked as an architect at RODE Architects in Boston, MA on the largest supportive housing project north of New York City, as well as flood-resilient, Passive House, and community-oriented projects. She has also worked at firms in Boston and New York specializing in affordable housing, historic preservation, and adaptive reuse.

Caroline Filice Smith is doctoral candidate in Urban Planning and the ‘22-‘23 Democracy Doctoral Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance at the Harvard Kennedy School. Their work focuses on racialized histories of urban design across the US and its empire, histories of activist planner-architects, and reparative and abolitionist models of urban design. Caroline’s dissertation project explores the emergence of “participatory planning” in the mid-twentieth century. Through a focus on federally funded—yet activist led—community action programs in the US, Caroline’s research examines how the Black Power movement, the War on Poverty, and models of community development originally designed to quell insurgency abroad, intersected to form the foundation of a now central paradigm of US urban planning practice. This work touches on issues of democratic social engineering, cold war imperialism, 20 th  century anti-racist urban uprisings, and struggles for self-determination across the US.

In addition to their dissertation, Caroline teaches and conducts research as part of the  Urban Design and the Color Line  project and has recently completed an anti-racist planning toolkit with the Highline Network and the Urban Institute ( link ), and a report for the Architectural League of NY on landscape and community-led, post-coal futures for Appalachia.  They are a Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative doctoral fellow, having previously served as an Irving Innovation Fellow, and their work has been funded by the Graham Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Warren Center for American Studies, the Canadian Center for Architecture, and the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative. Caroline holds a Master of Architecture in Urban Design with Distinction from the GSD, where they were awarded both the Thesis Prize and Academic Excellence Award in Urban Design – additionally, Caroline holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Virginia Tech. Prior to coming to Harvard, Caroline spent five years in professional architectural practice – most of which was spent working for UNStudio in their Shanghai office, and less of which was spent practicing in Los Angeles where they were actively involved in the Occupy movement.

Prior to doctoral studies, Sam worked in urban science-policy engagement for a Sustainability Research Network supported by the US National Science Foundation and as a research associate with the global cities research team at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Professionally, he has contributed to reports commissioned by UN Environment, the World Bank, and NATO. His scholarly work has been published in  Global Environmental Change .

Sam holds master’s degrees in urban planning and Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Latin American studies from Tulane University.

Eldra has presented work at conferences organized by the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, the European Architectural History Network, and the Première Université d’été de programme STARACO (STAtus, RAce, et COuleur) at the University of Nantes.

Currently, she is a lecturer and principal advisor to the MDesign Historic Preservation Program for the Department of Architecture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Additionally, she was the Nettie Seabrooks Graduate Curatorial Intern in European Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where she assisted museum curators with an upcoming exhibition entitled “Color of Faith.” Eldra has taught courses at the GSD in Western Architectural history and theory, from the Renaissance to the present. Before coming to Harvard, Eldra was an architectural design reviewer in the District of Columbia Office of Planning. Eldra has an MS in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania and a BS from Morgan State University.

Angela Wheeler is a sixth-year PhD candidate and graduate associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Her dissertation examines historic neighborhood conservation in the postwar Soviet Union and its development as an urban planning tool, site of transnational exchange, and arena for local identity politics. She is broadly interested in the history of heritage conservation movements, experimental and activist approaches to heritage, and the role of preservation pedagogy in design curricula.

After working with the International Council of Monuments and Sites as a Fulbright grantee in Tbilisi and conducting HUD surveys of Hawaii public housing, she completed an MSc in Historic Preservation at Columbia University. Her thesis, Socialist in Form, National in Content , investigated official attempts to reconcile historic preservation and postmodern aesthetics with Soviet ideology in the Brezhnev era.

Angela’s recent projects include a Graham Foundation grant for “Indigenous Outsiders: Endangered Islamic Heritage in the Republic of Georgia,” an exhibition and publication documenting the wooden mosques of Georgia’s Adjaran Muslim community. Her chapter on mosques of Russia and the Caucasus appeared in Rizzoli’s Mosques: Splendors of Islam (2017) and her book, the Tbilisi volume for DOM’s Architectural Guides series (2023), offers the first comprehensive English-language guide to the city since glasnost. Angela has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on architecture and urban history at Amherst College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Ziwei holds a Master in Landscape Architecture, a Master in Design Studies in Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), and a Bachelor of Architecture from Southeast University, China. She has also experience as an urban designer for one year for Stoss Landscape Urbanism, where she participated in projects in China, the U.S., and the United Arab Emirates.

Department of Art & Art History

10th Annual Undergraduate Juried Exhibition

The Department of Art & Art History invites any current Stanford undergraduate student to submit their works of art for our juried exhibition in the Fall of 2024.

Receive email announcements regarding upcoming lectures, exhibitions, and film screenings. 

Greater diversity and inclusion in the Department of Art and Art History

We are committed to building an equitable, antiracist, and non-discriminatory environment that empowers all students, staff, faculty, and community members.

The Department of Art & Art History is an interdisciplinary department offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in art history, art practice, film and media studies, and documentary film. 

• Art History

Art History is a discipline that strives to understand works of art, architecture, and design from a variety of perspectives, including the original context of their making and reception as well as their subsequent circulation, collection, conservation, and display. As culturally embedded expressions, works of art may yield multiple meanings depending on the kinds of research and interpretive strategies that art historians bring into play. 

Learn more about the Art History program

Art History undergraduate program

Art History graduate program

• Art Practice

The Art Practice program on both undergraduate and graduate levels offers production-based curriculum to prepare students for creative careers in the visual arts and to hone their creative capabilities. Access to diverse courses and faculty, cross-disciplinary interaction, and well-equipped labs are among the strengths of this flexible program.

Learn more about the Art Practice program

Art Practice undergraduate program

Art Practice graduate program

Documentary Film and Video

Students in the Documentary Film and Video Program become conversant with the documentary tradition as well as with alternative media and new directions in documentary.  In addition to the training in documentary production, graduates gain substantive research skills in film criticism and film analysis. The MFA degree is designed to prepare students for professional careers in film, video, and digital media, with the qualifications to teach at the university level.

 Learn more about the MFA Program in Documentary Film

Film and Media Studies

The Bachelor of Arts in Film & Media Studies provides students with knowledge of film aesthetics, national cinematic traditions, modes of production in narrative, documentary, and experimental films, the incorporation of moving image media by contemporary artists, and the proliferation of new forms of digital media.

Learn more about the Film and Media Studies program

Upcoming Events

Weintz Art Lecture Series: Anneka Lenssen

Edges of Egypt

Studio Lecture Series: Tiona Nekkia McClodden

Current exhibitions.

Color Deceives: Le Corbusier & Josef Albers

Bowes Library’s Spring 2024 exhibition,  Color Deceives , explores the color theories of modern artist Josef Albers (German-American, 1888-1976) and modern architect Le Corbusier (Swiss-…

Roots: Visual Work from the 2024 IDA Undergraduate Fellowship

The Very First and Infinitely Last: 2024 Undergraduate Honors Thesis Exhibition

The Department of Art & Art History presents The Very First and Infinitely Last , the 2024 Undergraduate Honors Thesis Exhibition, on view April 16 through May 3 at the Coulter Art…

Jessica Monette selected to exhibit at MoAD

Photo of Imani Roach by Naomieh Jovin

Imani Roach (BA '04) appointed inaugural director and curator for the Brind Center

Leading art historian presents a new grammar for understanding the meaning and significance of print

Tracing the Origins of Algorithmic Life

Roots of ‘big data’ can be seen in the history of Japanese psychological tests

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You’re being tested. You don’t know the criteria used to determine your score—or even your results. The test is being administered not by a human teacher or moderator, but by machines. And it’s going on 24 hours a day, every day of your life.

“The use of big data and algorithms in machine learning is a kind of test,” says 2024 Harvard Horizons Scholar Juhee Kang. “It’s going on constantly and more than ever we see new forms of artificial intelligence used in calculating and measuring different types of aptitudes.” 

A graduating PhD student in history and East Asian languages and civilizations at the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), Kang explores how testing and mass data collection evolved in 20th-century Japan, where they became central across society. In her Horizons project, “Numbers, Minds, and Society,” Kang charts the path of psychological tests from scientific novelty to the bulwark of “scientific management” and meritocracy. Her findings lead her neither to condemn nor promote testing but to call for transparency and public discussion as humanity enters an age governed by algorithms.

Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History Andrew Gordon, one of Kang’s faculty advisors, says psychological tests have become deeply interwoven into societies and cultures throughout the world. They remain both widely used and controversial, for instance, as a factor in determining admissions to prestigious universities. “Understanding when and how psychological tests emerged globally is both a fascinating historical question and one with implications for the present,” he says. Moreover, Japan is a particularly interesting subject for exploration because, unlike China, it did not have a long premodern history of using examinations to evaluate candidates for high office, and because of its international engagement.

“In the 20th century, as Juhee shows, the nation—including corporations, government offices, and commercial test creators—broadened the understanding of the role and value of tests of many sorts,” Gordon says. “They were seeking the holy grail of a test that did not examine subject knowledge but deeper attributes of individuals.  This took place through engagement with psychologists and test advocates in the West, especially Germany and the US, so this is a global story.”

Kang became curious about the history of testing in Japan, the eastern neighbor of her native Korea and the first non-Western industrial and imperial power. She says that beginning in the early 20th century, Japanese companies and institutions used psychological tests to determine who qualified for jobs and educational opportunities.

In the 20th century . . . [the Japanese] broadened the understanding of the role and value of tests of many sorts. They were seeking the holy grail of a test that did not examine subject knowledge but deeper attributes of individuals. —Professor Andrew Gordon 

“In the 1890s, you find the first use of the term ‘tesuto’ in a Japanese scientific journal,” she says. “I realized they were referring to something fundamentally different from the mere act of evaluating people based on some criteria, or even any historical precedents of official selection such as the civil service examination, and which only a very small portion of the population was even allowed to take. They were referring to a kind of scientific experiment that involved building a system of data collection, analysis, and formulation of a standard based on the information gathered.”

By the 1920s, Japan, like a lot of industrialized nations, was experiencing a surge in social movements. One such movement was the drive for efficiency in business operations. “‘Scientific’ management was a big force globally in the early 20th century,” Kang says. “One of its central principles was testing people based on their aptitude to perform a task and then putting them where they could be maximally productive.”

At the same time, the new education movement in Japan emphasized the innate qualities of individuals. The idea was to foreground a person’s distinctive characteristics so they could fully manifest their natural talents and growth. 

“There comes from the education movement a criticism that’s very familiar to us today,” Kang says. “Namely, that tests are biased toward those with a particular cultural knowledge. If you are given the privilege of being born into a certain family or being part of a social group, you learn, with only moderate effort, the qualities and skills the privileged class highly values.” 

Scientists in the first decades of the 20th century sought to resolve the problem by arguing for the use of psychological tests, for which, they argued, a subject could not prepare. It was around this time that knowledge about psychological tests—including the IQ test—had been imported for Japanese scientists to study and modify for use in Japan.

“Psychologists claimed that some of these psychological tests could measure something truly innate that was unaffected by all kinds of environmental factors,” Kang says. “Educators were divided. One faction welcomed the move; another resisted, saying that any form of test would cause the same problem in the end. Still, another consisted of those who believed in the efficacy of psychological tests but worried that it would make personal effort worthless.” 

Psychological tests emerged as a new cutting-edge technology of human differences precisely when Japan’s existing social structure could no longer accommodate its growing diversity. —Juhee Kang

The Contour of a Person’s Mind

One of the measures Kang explores in depth is the Uchida-Kraepelin (UK) test. Inspired by the work of German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, Japanese psychologist Uchida Yuzaburo in 1926 developed a new way to represent the pattern of a person’s learning process. Subjects got a piece of paper that had 25 horizontal rows. Each row contained a series of single-digit numbers, one after the other. Subjects added the numbers in each row for one minute, writing down only the last digit of each sum on the paper as they proceeded. For instance, say the first two numbers in a row were 6 and 7. The sum would be 13, so the subject would write “3” in the space next to the 7 and then do the same for the next two numbers in the row. The aim was to do as many sums as possible in a minute, take a short break, and then do it again for the next row until the subject finished the first 15 rows. Then they got a 5-minute break before starting again on the final 10 rows. 

“The scientists wanted a simple version of the advanced mental processes that we are required to do unconsciously to live our daily lives,” Kang explains. “Then, based on repetition of that simple form of work, the test would measure something fundamental, something that's so unique about this person's psyche that they could argue that it was the contour of a person's mind.”

In this case, Kang uses the word “contour” quite literally. When a subject had completed the test, scientists drew a line that connected the last sums in each of the 25 rows: a work performance curve. “At the beginning of the test, participants were usually excited about the new activity, so the curve went up,” Kang says. “Then, because just adding is such tedious work, performance declined. As subjects approached the end, they got excited again and performance rose once more. Based on those assumptions, scientists judged the ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ pattern of this curve and applied it to their assessments.”

The UK test was increasingly used to measure aptitude in a variety of settings as its commercial uses became evident. "In the 1920s, the test was developed as an alternative to scholastic exams,” Kang says. “In the 1930s, however, it became more widely applied to occupational selections, mainly for 'modern’ jobs that required lots of repetition, such as telegraphers, train or taxi drivers, and telephone operators. In the 1940s, it then took a darker turn and was used to screen malingerers among the repatriated soldiers who worked at munitions factories to address wartime labor shortages. Sometime in the 1970s, it was exported as the human resources management tool that guaranteed ‘Japan quality’ at manufacturing factories in Southeast Asia."

Kang says the UK test matters because of its claimed ability to relieve the modern anxiety of not intuitively knowing oneself and others. “As Japan became a multiracial, multiethnic powerhouse, it also became a highly industrialized society, in which people from diverse backgrounds began to live side by side,” she says. “As physical differences became more evident and ‘knowing’ a person got more complex, people sought technology that could manifest the invisible qualities. Scientific tests assured them with their purported methodological objectivity that aimed to transcend linguistic, cultural, or other environmentally induced biases in assessment.”

Discretionary Effort

Kang is not an opponent of psychological testing. She says humans living in the whirl of modernity need some kind of discretionary system. “Modern society is inevitably based on some form of judgment and discrimination,” Kang says. “Testing has come to serve that function. In fact, psychological tests emerged as a new cutting-edge technology of human differences precisely when Japan’s existing social structure could no longer accommodate its growing diversity.” 

At the same time, Kang is alarmed by the constancy of algorithmic testing and the way that human life is increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence (AI). She sees parallels between early 20th-century Japanese society and today. Both are worlds of increasing visible diversity that give rise to new assessment technologies.\

“We are the subject of algorithmic testing by big tech companies whether we like it or not,” she says. “To use their services, we have to click a little box that basically says, ‘I agree to allow you to do whatever you want with my data, and I don’t need to know anything about it.’ But, increasingly, there are more concerns about what’s going on inside the ‘black box’ of how AI learns and creates.”

Kang says that as with any science or technology, the benevolence or malignance of algorithmic testing and machine learning is a function of the value systems underpinning them. That’s why she believes that transparency is crucial in the formulation of these technologies—as is a thoroughgoing public conversation about their implementation. 

“Digital life needs to be in balance with the physical world—actual human interactions,” she says. “Some things are untouchable by testing. Some things are so uniquely personal, so uniquely valuable that statistically based judgment has no meaning in them.”

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Meg Campbell

Founder and Chief of Innovation & Strategy, Codman Academy Charter Public School

Meg Campbell, Founder and former Head of School, Codman Academy Charter Public School, currently is Chief of Innovation and Strategy. She focuses on integration of health and education pre-natal to age 5 - “The Younger Siblings Project” - and addressing climate change at the local level through greening initiatives in Codman Square. Previously she was Lecturer at Harvard Graduate School of Education and founding Executive Director of EL Education (formerly Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound).

Meg serves on the boards of The Primary School in East Palo Alto, California, Squash Busters, Dorset Theatre Festival Artistic Advisory Board, and The Boston Women’s Heritage Trail, which she co-founded. She is a founder and former board member of Margarita Muñiz Academy and served on the Boston School Committee. Awards include American Youth Foundation "Youth Leadership Award" and Grand Circle Travel Foundation's "Lewis Changing People's Award."

Meg is the author of two collections of poetry from Midmarch Arts Press: More Love (2010) and Solo Crossing (1999). She holds an A.B. from Harvard University in History & Literature, an M.S. from Wheelock College in Early Childhood & Elementary Education, and a C.A.S. from Harvard Graduate School of Education in Social Policy.

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Arts First to kick off biggest festival yet

Eileen O’Grady

Harvard Staff Writer

Departing longtime leader reflects on two decades of growth  

Arts First, Harvard’s annual festival showcasing campus creativity, kicks off its biggest year yet on Wednesday featuring five days of concerts, plays, dance performances, visual art displays, and more. Making this year’s celebration particularly poignant is the announcement that the Office for the Arts’ longtime leader — director Jack Megan — will step down on June 30 after 23 years.

During Megan’s tenure, Arts First steadily grew in size and ambition, adding more public art displays and performance opportunities with every passing year. The 2024 schedule will be the largest to date, with an additional day of fun added to the week.

“It’s like an ‘exclamation point’ on the arts year,” Megan said about the festival. “It calls attention in a very large, campus-wide way to the richness of the Harvard arts scene and how vibrant it really is.”

On Thursday, the festival’s first-ever drag show, “Into the Wild,” featuring a cast of Harvard performers donning fashions inspired by nature and the outdoors, will be emceed by environmental activist and acclaimed drag artist Pattie Gonia.

“Since the beginning of time, art has been one of our biggest ways to take action for what we care about and to bring people together,” Gonia said in an interview. “In every single social justice movement in America’s history, art’s been at the center of liberation and community and change.”

Environmental themes also run through student public art displays, including a fiber piece displayed around a red maple tree in Harvard Yard called “ Leaf Litter ,” by Graduate School of Design student Sophie Chien. The tufted piece represents the natural ecosystem of a tree base without interruption from landscaping.

“It’s not just a piece you look at and think about,” said Chien ’24, who is pursuing a dual master’s in landscape architecture and urban planning. “You can touch it, feel it, understand it.”

“What I’m feeling is not a sense of looking back but looking forward.” Jack Megan

Other highlights of the week include a talk with Oscar-nominated filmmaker and screenwriter Ava DuVernay; an electronic drone concert composed on vintage synthesizers; and an open rehearsal by dance company RootsUprising of a work in progress called “Witness Trees” that explores relationships between nature and enslaved Africans on a South Carolina plantation. See the full Arts First lineup .

“I am excited for this year’s Arts First celebrations,” said Rakesh Khurana, Danoff Dean of Harvard College. “First, we celebrate our students, their unique gifts and talents, and all those who support our students as scholars and artmakers. Second, we celebrate the students, staff, and volunteers who generate Arts First and all their work behind the scenes and onstage to bring this gathering to our campus. Third, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Office for the Arts funding and the tremendous progress we’ve seen that inspires the next generation of artmakers at Harvard College.”

It’s also a landmark year for the Office for the Arts itself, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

“What I’m feeling is not a sense of looking back but looking forward,” Megan said. “I’m incredibly happy about the arts at Harvard and joyful that we get to mark it in this way every year. Marking 50 years to me is not the end of 50 years, but the beginning.”

Since Megan was named the Office for the Arts’ second-ever director in 2001, extracurricular arts have become one of Harvard’s most popular student activities. Under his leadership, the Office created the Artist Development Fellowship fund and reimagined campus spaces such as Farkas Hall and the Ceramics Program studio. Most recently, he led the office in a strategic planning process, setting up a future for extracurricular arts on campus.

“We are on the precipice of the next great era in Harvard arts and, with the strategic goals set forth in the report, the OFA is positioned to play a major role in that,” Megan said.

The Harvard Arts Medal , established in 1995, has remained a key tradition. Receiving the honor this year, with a public ceremony slated for Wednesday evening, is poet, scholar, and director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture Kevin Young ’92 .

Megan leaves with many great memories — like the time he had to fix a giant egg sculpture that toppled over in the Yard, or when he got to watch students perform “Sing Out, March On” in honor of the late Congressman John Lewis when Lewis was Commencement speaker in 2018.

But Megan’s favorites are the simple memories — all the times he saw students collaborate and create good art.

“I feel enormous gratitude to have anything to do with supporting the creative journey that our students go on,” Megan said. “That journey is going to continue and it’s going to get stronger in the years ahead.”

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HOLD Opening Event

• Wednesday, May 15, 2024 3 PM ET
• Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Garden, Radcliffe Yard 10 Garden Street Cambridge, MA 02138

Join us to celebrate the opening of a new installation by Harvard Graduate School of Design students Curry J. Hackett MAUD ’24 and Gabriel Jean-Paul Soomar MArch II ’24, MDes ’24, winners of the biennial Radcliffe Institute Public Art Competition .

Hackett and Soomar’s installation, HOLD, takes cues from the architecture of Radcliffe Yard, as well as a vessel’s hull and sail. In both its title and U-shaped form, the work acknowledges the complex relationship Black communities have had with enclosure, symbolizing restrictions placed on Black mobility (including redlining, incarceration, and slavery), as well as embracing spaces that have brought communities of color together (such as the Black church, the front porch, and the hair salon).

Installed in the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Garden, HOLD creates a new outdoor site for reflection, welcoming all visitors and inviting them to engage with the work and to contemplate communities that may historically–or currently–be overlooked.

In this opening event, a short speaking program will be followed by a lively and informal gathering, with light refreshments and a DJ set by the artists.

Free and open to the public.

 To attend the in-person event, each individual will need to register .

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Radcliffe Day 2024

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Jacob Rosen

Engineering santa cruz.

“There is really no end to the march of invention,” said Brevet Brigadier General John A.B.C. Smith, a character in Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 short story “The Man That Was Used Up.”

This early science fiction tale of a military man remade of manufactured parts — a 19th-century bionic man — is more than an interesting side note to America’s conflicted relationship with technology. By expressing the fear that we may lose our natural selves, and the idea that the conquest of the frontier transforms us into pieces of military machinery, Poe prefigured the anxieties many Americans feel about technological advances.

If you dream of electric sheep — or androids with imperial ambitions — it’s reassuring to hear UC Santa Cruz robotics researcher Jacob Rosen describing the inspiration for his work. “I had an adviser back in Israel who told me that everything you do should at least help one person,” said Rosen, a professor in the Jack Baskin School of Engineering. 

Rosen and his fellow researchers at the UC Santa Cruz Bionics Lab are developing robotic systems that will help far more than a single individual. Their main areas of research are “exoskeletons” that help stroke victims recover the ability to control arm movement, and remote surgical robotics that will allow doctors to operate without actually being on the scene, as well as to work with robotic “partners” to speed up surgeries.

Last spring, the Silicon Valley Business Journal honored Rosen with its “Health Care Hero Award” for his robotics research.

At the University of Washington, Rosen did postdoctoral research with pioneers in the field of remote surgery, including Richard Satava, a science fiction buff and professor who had served in Desert Storm. Satava envisioned a fully automated operating room called a trauma pod. This scenario is now close to becoming reality, thanks to collaboration between engineers like Rosen and surgeons like Satava. In a recent interview, Rosen explained why cross-disciplinary research is so crucial, but why it sometimes can be difficult.

You've talked about conducting research collaboratively the way computer engineers develop open source software. Is this a new idea in the field of robotics?

It’s new, but it’s also a natural progression, if you think about the field, which is very multi-disciplinary. My undergraduate degree is in mechanical engineering, my graduate studies were in biomedical engineering and my post doc was electrical engineering. I moved across the engineering landscape. This is, in a sense, the story of robotics. There is no one sub-discipline in engineering that can claim it.

You received a grant that will allow a half dozen institutions to experiment with Raven II, the remote surgical hardware and software you've developed. Was it hard to get your collaborators to accept this approach?

It was hard to get me to accept it. It was very suspicious. My colleague at the University of Washington, Blake Hannaford, came up with the idea: Let’s write a grant, duplicate the system, and give it to our “vicious enemies” (laughs) for free. The only reason I agreed to do it is that he had proved me wrong several times. And he was right.

There’s an honest effort to work together towards the common goal. Everyone can access the smallest screw to change and modify the system. On a more serious note, Raven itself was originally developed because industry wouldn’t allow academics full access to surgical robotics, and we didn’t want to hold the research back by adopting that approach.

Your collaborators are a pretty impressive group.

They are impressive. We’re working with Harvard and Johns Hopkins, UCLA, UC Berkeley, University of Nebraska and the University of Washington. I feel that we’re taking the right stance. There are so many aspects of surgical robotics that a single researcher, and even multiple institutions, can’t address. Things get very intense and very complicated when you’re actually using the technology in the field.

What closed the deal for you?

Robert Auman, an Israeli mathematician, won a Nobel prize in economics for his work on game theory. Basically, he discovered that collaboration isn’t necessarily effective if it’s a one-shot deal. But if a game is played multiple times, collaboration yields better results. I began to feel that collaboration is at the foundation of our existence. We used to collaborate to survive; now we have the luxury to choose whether we want to collaborate. But the benefits can be significant, across the board. For example, if two competing companies collaborate, they actually increase their revenue.

You'd already collaborated with surgeons.

I found the confluence of engineering and medicine interesting. Most people were shying away from it because it’s a very elaborate and time-consuming process. These are two cultures and we don’t even speak the same language. They try to intimidate us with anatomical terms in Latin and you try to intimidate them with equations.

How do you get everyone to agree?

It takes time. Once they learn our language and they learn about ours, things get better. A lot of it is setting expectations. Surgeons in particular are very hands-on. They want their tool to be in their hands tomorrow. Yesterday, actually. But as one of my colleagues put it, medicine is a problem-rich environment, and engineering is a solution-rich discipline.

What do you see in the future for remote surgery?

I’m interested in collaborative surgery: two surgeons, two sets of arms. They could be next to each other, or in remote places, but either way, surgery would be accelerated. One of them could be a machine, so it would be a human collaborating with an algorithm. The U.S. military has a vision that 15 to 20 years from now, the entire military will be robotic. This includes medical services. So there will be movement in that direction.

And after surgery, or stroke, comes rehabilitation. That's where the exoskeleton comes in. What is it, exactly?

An exoskeleton is a device that you wear, like clothes. It’s supposed to interact with you physically, co-exist with you. It can amplify your strength, even if you’re healthy. For example, it can help you carry heavier loads. We sometimes call it a haptic device. Haptics in Greek is a sense of touch. 

How does it work?

I can put you in a virtual reality, and map the motion you make into an avatar. With most virtual reality set-ups, if you reach toward a ball, you can see the hand reaching the ball, and it might even penetrate the ball, but you don’t feel anything. Our exoskeleton stops once your reach the ball. You would not penetrate it, and you would feel it. You can move around in a virtual physical world and feel the force feedback.

How does that help the disabled?

It’s neurological. The whole idea of treating these people is based on the brain’s plasticity. We have more neurons than we actually need, and if one part of the brain is damaged, other parts can take over and recover some of the motor control. But it takes time.

Insurance companies expect stroke victims to relearn in three months what took them 20 years to learn in the first place. It’s almost impossible. But you can amplify the learning. Now the learning is limited by how much time stroke victims have with a physical therapist, but people can tolerate far more therapy. That’s where the exoskeleton comes in.

Will it replace physical therapists?

No. But it will allow therapists to treat more patients at the same time and offer patients the opportunity to do more therapy. We’re not removing people from the scene. What we’re planning to do is make it patient-centered, rather than therapist-centered.

That sounds great. But the exoskeleton looks large and heavy. How do stroke victims use it?

Gravity is a very strong force on our body. About 95 percent of the energy we use goes to keeping our body in a certain posture, and only 5 percent to move in a certain direction. Some of these patients lose a lot of muscle control. This exoskeleton’s actuators, electrical motors, compensate for the gravitational load, and also for the patient’s weight. They feel as if they are in space. So they can concentrate on the motion itself.

Is this similar to the devices we've seen on TV: those miraculous-appearing devices that allow paraplegics to walk?

That approach consists of connecting electrodes directly to the brain. There is a fundamental problem with it. The brain doesn’t like that you’re inserting electrodes in it, so it develops tissue that will isolate it from the electrodes. After three months, the brain will fully encapsulate the electrodes. Unless there’s a breakthrough in biocompatibility, the technology is viable but very short-lived.

With a stroke, the recovery continues indefinitely. You take someone in, you treat them for a while, you build the neurological connections, and you set them free. We looked at people 10 years past a stroke and the brain is still demonstrating the ability to recover. We think of our system as a “gym for the brain.” It’s a physical activity that’s changing neurological set-ups.

Is this available yet?

We’re trying to make it commercially available through a company I founded called Exosense.

You've only been at Santa Cruz for a few years, yet the lab seems to be moving quickly, both in the rehabilitation devices and the remote surgical effort.

Typically you find robotics distributed among many departments in engineering. Richard Hughey, who’s now the dean of undergraduate studies, decided to invest in robotics, and Santa Cruz offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees in robotics. The university is unusual in offering that degree for undergraduates. 

I'm getting the feeling that you're intense about your work.

That’s possible. I used to play violin, and row competitively. 

How was the competitive rowing in Israel?

We were actually pretty good. We competed internationally, in three world championships. But it was 25 years ago. I’m still rowing, only now it’s in a reservoir a few miles from here.

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