History of Art and Architecture

Michael Falser studied architecture and art history at the universities of Vienna, Paris and Berlin. Between 2009 and 2017 he was project leader at the Chair of Global Art History in the Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context. The Dynamics of Transculturality” at Heidelberg University in Germany. His “Habilitation” and 2-volume monograph Angkor Wat – A Transcultural History of Heritage (DeGruyter, 2019) won the International Book Prize of the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) at Leiden University in 2021. Along with visiting professorships at the universities of Vienna, Kyoto, Bordeaux-Montaigne, Paris-Sorbonne, Heidelberg and Ottawa, he conducted, between 2020 and 2025, a German Research Foundation-funded research project at Technical University of Munich, investigating German colonial architecture. In this context and on the basis of intense field work in Africa, Asia and Oceania, his most recent open access publications include Monuments and Sites De-colonial! Approaches to the Built Heritage of the German Colonial Era (ICOMOS Germany, Berlin 2024) and Architecture in Oceania (1840-1970). Para-Colonial Influences, Colonial Transactions, Postcolonial Legacies (Leuven University Press, 2025). Currently, he is working on a monograph Global Architectural History. Case Studies towards a new Discipline (forthcoming).

While being associated with the Institute of Art History at Heidelberg University, he is Visiting Professor of Global Modern Architectural History during the academic year 2026/7 at the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Brown University.