I have a strong track record of research led teaching. I taught design studio and history at the Welsh School of Architecture Cardiff for 10 years before running the MArch at the University of Bath. Whilst at Bath I worked with students to develop anthropological film as a means of charting the relationship between people and site. The work, developed on a highly contested site in inner city Bristol culminated in an exhibition, Redcliffe Revisited at the Architecture Centre there. see website

At Sheffield I lead Humanities 1: Nature and Space in Western Architecture in Year 1. I am really interested in encouraging students to be critical of their education and aware of the hidden agendas in the things around them which is why I like to work with First years in Semester 1.

I have similar motivations in teaching Theory and Research in Year 5 as I want to help students develop a critical appreciation of issues of methodology. This was the focus Theory Forum ‘At Home’ which took place in November 2010.

I like developing research with MArch students and thinking of ways of facilitating other people’s research. I presented work with Louis Lane at the Agency AHRA conference in Sheffield in 2008 and work with Fearghal Murray at Field, the AHRA conference in Edinburgh in 2009. see youtube video

I also authored the on line training programme ‘Getting Published in the Arts’ for Epigeum, a spin out company from Imperial college. see website

One of the most enjoyable teaching roles in the school is supervising the undergraduate Special Study and the MArch Dissertation. I have a growing number of students who choose to explore issues of taste, make critiques of architectural education and operate on the interface between architecture and the social sciences.

Head of School (since November 2010)

Member of Faculty Executive Board, Faculty of Social Sciences

Chair of External Relations Committee

Much of my attention has been focused on revising the history of Le Corbusier, my aim being to reveal neglected aspects of his work that have contemporary relevance. My first book written with Sarah Menin, Nature and Space: Aalto and Le Corbusier (2000), used psychoanalytical methodologies to explore the two architects’ obsession with nature. Le Corbusier Architect and Feminist (2004) explored his interest in gender equality. Le Corbusier in Detail (2007) reasserted the poetic possibilities of construction. Le Corbusier and the Architectural Promenade (2010), utilizing film theory and the laws of rhetoric focused on the experience of moving through buildings. I am currently writing Ineffable Space: Le Corbusier and the Church with Inge Linder-Gaillard (Birkhauser, 2012). (see article in BD by Cany Ash on Unite d'habitation in Marseille, France by Le Corbusier)

Why people in the UK seem to value architecture so little is at the heart of my agenda. This is why I have an ongoing project on house extensions and why people so rarely employ architects to do them.

I am in the process of developing a Knowledge Exchange project four other schools on sharing practice based and academic research in the field of housing and is part of a major interdisciplinary project on the future of the terraced house. At the same time I am leading the RIBA student destinations survey, a ten year study with the aim of finding out where architecture students are eventually employed.

2010 – Faculty of Social Sciences HEIF 4 funding for cpd, £30,000.
2010 – Faculty of Social Sciences Research funding for ‘At Home’ conference - £1500
2010 – British Academy, £5,000 for copyright fees
2007 – British Academy, £4,958 for copyright fees
2005 – Leverhulme Trust, £21,094, research fellowship
2005 – Cardiff University, £4,500 for research into the use of Learning Journals
2003 - AHRB Grant, £5,000 for research costs for Le Corbusier in Detail
2003 – British Academy Grant £4,795 for copyright fees
2003 - British Academy Grant, £1,000 for travel
2002 – British Academy Grant with Sarah Menin, £3,500 for copyright fees
1999 – British Academy Research Grant, £2,215 for copyright fees
1999 – Dorothy Stroud Bursary, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, £500 for copyright fees
1997 – RIBA Research Trust Award, £3,000 for travel

Sara Howard, ‘Elizabeth Whitworth Scott Architect’, MPhil University of Bath 2008.

With Dr Carmen Szabo and Dr Steve Nicholson from the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics I am supervising Rosie Ward, part of the RECITE team, who has been working on video projection, performance and the city since 2010.

With Peter Blundell Jones I am supervising Diego Gonzalez Carrasco whose research is on the subject of the Aymara home.

I am SCHOSA Council representative for Research and is on the RIBA Research Committee in this capacity. I have been invited to several other schools of architecture as a research mentor.

Judge for the RIBA President’s Medals Dissertation Prize in 2003

My book Le Corbusier in Detail was nominated for the RIBA International Book of the Year award 2008.

I was appointed a member of the AHRC Peer Review Panel in 2009.

I am a regular reviewer for the Times Higher Education Supplement.