History of Art and Architecture

Professor Osayimwese is an architectural historian specializing in the relationship between political ideologies, the built environment, and material culture in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Anglo-Caribbean, and Central Europe between 1750 and 1950. She is Professor of the History of Art and Architecture and Urban Studies, and an affiliate faculty member in Africana Studies and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown University. She has a decade of leadership experience in academia, professional organizations, and service organizations including the Society of Architectural Historians, European Architectural History Network, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Rice School of Architecture Advisory Council, and Rhode Island State Historical Review Board. Professor Osayimwese has served as Department Chair and Director of Graduate Studies at HIAA, and she currently serves as Vice-President of the Society of Architectural Historians. 

Professor Osayimwese is the author of Africa’s Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage (Princeton University, 2025) and Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Germany (Pittsburgh, 2017); editor of German Colonialism in Africa and its Legacies: Architecture, Art, Urbanism, and Visual Culture (Bloomsbury, 2023); and co-editor of Routledge Companion to Critical Approaches in Race and Architecture (Bloomsbury, 2025). Her work has also been published in African Arts, Architectural Theory Review, Journal of Architecture, Journal of Architectural Education, Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal, kritische berichte: Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschafte, and e-flux journal. The winner of the 2020 Schelling Foundation Prize for Architectural Theory, her research has been funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Canadian Center for Architecture, Gerda Henkel Foundation, German Academic Exchange Service, Graham Foundation for the Fine Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Social Sciences Research Council. Her current research explores Western expropriation of Africa's architectural heritage; the problem of translation in the historiography of African architecture; and migration, property, and emancipation in the Anglo-Caribbean. Professor Osayimwese received a Ph.D. in the history and theory of architecture from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; a Master of Architecture from Rice University; and a Bachelor of Arts in The Growth and Structure of Cities from Bryn Mawr College.

Professor Osayimwese offers courses in colonial, postcolonial, and global architectural history, which are crosslisted in other departments in order to help students understand how architecture is embedded in larger social, political, economic processes. She has advised undergraduate theses on topics such as the memorialization of slavery, border walls, global gated communities, and histories of informal housing in the global South; and serves as primary advisor for Ph.D. students using postcolonial and decolonial frameworks to study histories of architecture, built environments, and material culture around the world. Professor Osayimwese is accepting new PhD students.