Associate Professor Katharine Bartsch

• Biography/ Background

  Katharine is Discipline Lead of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in the School of Architecture and Civil Engineering. She is an experienced leader in the School who is committed to excellence in learning and teaching. Katharine is passionate about higher degree research (HDR), and she is an experienced HDR examiner (nationally and internationally).

  Katharine’s research examines how human mobility shapes the built environment, specifically the architecture of Muslim communities. Islam is a global faith and it has never existed in a vacuum; Islam is currently the second largest religion in Australia (ABS 2021). The emergence and diffusion of Islam can be traced along routes of migration, pilgrimage, trade, or travel in pursuit of knowledge. Given this context of mobility and the cultural encounters that it engenders, the goal of Katharine’s research is to interpret the complexity and diversity of Muslim communities that is materialised in the built environment. Thus, her research is interdisciplinary, reaching beyond conventional discourses of architecture, to obtain rich insights from anthropology, cultural geography, world systems theories, postcolonial theory, and the history of travel. This approach enables a critical understanding of the production and transformation of the predominantly hybrid architecture of Muslim communities. Thus, Katharine’s research offers a compelling counter-narrative to pervasive misconceptions about architecture and Islam.

  Katharine’s PhD is titled Rethinking Islamic Architecture: A Critique of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture through the Paradigm of Encounter (awarded 2005). This dissertation was partly enabled by a productive period of study abroad at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, based at MIT and Harvard University, and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Geneva.

  Katharine has worked in collaborative design offices in Adelaide and India and she has travelled extensively. Combined, these experiences shape the global perspective that Katharine brings to her teaching and research activities.

  Katharine is the Academic Coordinator (University of Adelaide) of the Joint Education Program with Nantong University, Jiangsu Province, China. This 9 year Bachelor program in Architecture is approved by the Ministry of Education, PRC. Students enrolled in this exciting program graduate with parchments from both institutions. Courses are taught by University of Adelaide staff (including Katharine), in China, in Stage 1 (3.5 years) and in Adelaide in Stage 2 (1.5 years). The program caters to approx. 250 students.

• Qualifications

  Bachelor of Architectural Studies, University of Adelaide (with a major in Italian Language and Culture, Flinders University)

  Bachelor of Architecture, Honours, University of Adelaide

  PhD (specialisation in Islamic Architecture), University of Adelaide

• Teaching Interests

  Design Studio

  History and Theory of Architecture

  History and Theory of Landscape Architecture 

  Architecture of Contemporary Muslim Communities

  Impact of the Built Environment on the Biophysical Environment

  Offshore Studio Rome 2007

  Offshore Studio Oman 2018

  Offshore Studio Suzhou 2024

   

• Research Interests

  Two key themes continue to influence my research and the HDR topics that I supervise:

  1. Human mobility (migration, displacement, pilgrimage, diaspora) and the ways that this shapes architecture, landscapes and settlements, historically and today.

  2. A humanitarian focus on migration (rural>urban, displacement, resettlement [forced and voluntary]) and settlement in the context of large scale infrastructure projects or urbanisation.

  More detail is available in my Researcher Profile.

• Publications

  View Researcher Profile

Entry last updated: Sunday, 4 Feb 2024

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