Team

team - online group photo

our team: up (f.l.t.r.): Sarah Wheat, Prof. Dr. Alla Vronskaya, Dorothea Blank; middle (f.l.t.r.): Constanze Kummer, Benjamin Eckel, Megan Eardley; down: Fee Huschenbeth.

Megan Eardley

Temporary Lecturer I History and Theory of Architecture

Eardley, Megan
Site
Gottschalkstraße 24
34127 Kassel
Room
Gottschalk 24, Torhaus B, Raum 2110

Biographie  (Megan Eardley)

Megan Eardley studiert die Überschneidungspunkte von Architektur, Wissenschaft, Technologie und von politischer Philosophie in Südafrika während des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts. Ihre jetzige Forschung fokussiert sich darauf, wie die Bergbauindustrie Südafrikas während des Kalten Krieges Lebensmodelle und -konzepte im Weltall beeinflusst hat. Unter Einbezug der Geschichte von Arbeit und Geschlechtern bringt sie Fragen über Messung, Standardsprachen und über die Zukunft des Menschen in biologisch gesehen feindliche Lebensumgebungen in den Vordergrund. In den letzten Jahren wurde ihre Arbeit unterstützt durch die NASA, die National Science Foundation, die History of Science Society sowie durch das Canadian Center for Architecture. Von 2020 bis 2021 ist Megan Eardley Doktorandin im Fachgebiet der Architekturgeschichte und -theorie an der Princeton Universität und Gastdozentin an der Universität von Witwatersrand.

Megan Eardley studies the intersections of architecture, science and technology, and political philosophy in southern Africa in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her current research examines how the South African mining industry shaped models and concepts of life in deep space during the Cold War. While attending to histories of labor, race, and gender, she foregrounds questions about measurement, the language of standards, and the future of 'the human' in environments that are hostile to biological life. In recent years, her work has been supported by NASA, the National Science Foundation, the History of Science Society, as well as the Canadian Center for Architecture. In 2020-2021, Megan is a PhD Candidate in Architectural History and Theory at Princeton University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Witwatersrand.

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Fellows

Nikolay Erofeev is an architectural historian whose work focuses on socialist architecture and urban planning. His research looks at mass housing, using it as a lens with which to explore various facets of socialist society – such as architectural aspects of prefabrication systems, the analysis of labor relations, technical assistance projects in the Global South and the late-socialist destinies of avant-garde projects. In his book manuscript, ‘Experiment in concrete: Diversity and Debate in the Design of Soviet Housing, 1955-1990,’ he explores the understudied architectural story of the ‘bureaucratic modernism’ of prefabricated housing. In contrast to a rather simplistic view of standardized housing as an ‘end of architecture’ and a complete takeover of the profession by construction experts, the book reconstructs a vibrant, complex and uneven history, as the housing drive became central for the formation of late-Soviet design culture, construction industry and urban sociology.

Erofeev received his D.Phil (PhD) in History from the University of Oxford in 2020 and his specialist degree in the History of Art from Moscow State University in 2014. Erofeev previously had fellowships at the Department of Urban Studies at the University of Basel and at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University. Erofeev also had academic appointments at Manchester Metropolitan University where he taught Master of Architecture dissertations. Erofeev’s fellowship at the University of Kassel is funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Grant. His research was previously also supported by Hill Foundation and the Swiss Government Excellence scholarships, among others. Erofeev published on the history of socialist architecture in edited volumes and peer-review journals.

 

Publications

N. Erofeev and Ł. Stanek, ‘Concerns of multilateral socialist assistance to Mongolia during the Cold War’ in M. Motylinska, A. Butter, C. Bernhardt (eds.) A. Between Solidarity and Economic Constraints (De Gruyter, 2022) [forthcoming]

N. Erofeev and Ł. Stanek, ‘Integrate, Adapt, Collaborate: Comecon Architecture in Socialist Mongolia’ ABE Journal 19 (2021), DOI: 10.4000/abe.12604

N. Erofeev ‘Review: Moscow Monumental: Soviet Skyscrapers and Urban Life in Stalin's Capital, By Katherine Zubovich’ Social History, 46/3 (2021), p.336-338.

Erofeev, N. ‘Cybernetics & Standardization: Revisiting a Soviet Vision for Better Urbanism’ Strelka MAG (04.10.2021).

N. Erofeev ‘The I-464 Housing Delivery System: technological transfers from France to Moscow, from Moscow to Alma-Ata, from Alma-Ata to Havana’ Project Russia, 96 (2021), p. 239-64.

N. Erofeev 'The I-464 Housing Delivery System: A Tool for Urban Modernisation in the Socialist World and Beyond' Fabrications, 29/2 (2019), doi:10.1080/10331867.2019.1611255

N. Erofeev and M. Sapunova, 'Urban Standard and Norm and Their (Post)-Socialist Transformation', Urban Studies and Practices, 3/4 (2018), pp. 7-11

Student assistants

Elina Amann supports the project "Second World-Second Sex" and the project-related website "Women Building Socialism".

Antonia Heesen supports the entire department through various assignments.

Andreas Panagiotopoulos supports the Office for International Affairs.

Philip Stöcker supports the work linked to the lecture GdgU (Geschichte der gebauten Umwelt).