I am a historian of 20th-century urbanism, with a focus on connections between regions often regarded as peripheral. My work examines how interactions among Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East have shaped urban landscapes on a global scale. I trace how competing visions of the world facilitated architectural exchanges beyond the colonial-capitalist core, and I study these exchanges as sources of conceptual innovation for understanding the social and environmental challenges of urbanization today. My research draws on extensive archival materials from West African repositories, particularly cartographic collections, and makes use of digital tools (GIS) to critically address issues of archival fragmentation and incongruence.
Recent publications:
Single-authored books
- Architecture in Global Socialism. Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War, Princeton University Press, 2020.
- Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011
Three recent journal papers
- Hegemony by Adaptation: Decolonizing Ghana’s Construction Industry, Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol. 66, Issue 4, (2024), pp. 899-932
- Buildings for Dollars and Oil: East German and Romanian Construction Companies in Cold War Iraq, Contemporary European History 30:4 (2021), 544-61
- Socialist Worldmaking: The Political Economy of Urban Comparison in the Cold War, Urban Studies 59:8 (2021), 1575-1596,