Parity Talks V: Actions and Accountability

Speakers

Brady Burroughs is Head of Second Year at KTH School of Architecture in Stockholm, Sweden. She studied architecture at Virginia Tech, USA, Gender Studies at Stockholm University, and holds a PhD in Critical Studies of Architecture from KTH. Her research focuses on design education in intersections of gender, race and sexuality, by exploring improper and unserious practices to unsettle habitual modes of criticism and relocate and reimagine a serious and privileged discipline. Recent publications include: Architectural Flirtations: A Love Storey (dissertation, 2016) and Ahmed for Architecture Students (co-authored with master’s architecture students at KTH, 2019).

Petra Van Brabandt is a feminist philosopher. She obtained her PhD from the University of Antwerp in feminist history of philosophy. She teaches semiotics, art theory, and cultural criticism and is head of the research department and the Advanced Master program in artistic research in a social-political context at Sint Lucas School of Arts Antwerp. She is also guest lecturer at Sandberg Institute Amsterdam. Her research focuses on feminist philosophy, more specifically pornography studies, queer theory, intersectional theory, care ethics, standpoint theory and postcolonial studies. Her current research concerns wet aesthetics in art and pornography and sexism and racism in arts/education.

Matri-Archi(tecture) is an intersectional collective that empowers African women as a network dedicated to African built development and spatial education focusing particularly between Switzerland and South Africa.

Khensani de Klerk is an architectural designer and planner from Johannesburg, South Africa. Her efforts are centred on gender empowerment in the architectural industry as well as built environment research and practice. She is the founder and co-director of Matri-Archi(tecture). She has been a researcher at ETH Zürich at the Chair of Architecture and Urban Design, and has worked in Zürich, Johannesburg and Cape Town. She is currently reading an MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (RIBA II) at The University of Cambridge with her research focusing on design safe public space and social infrastructural provisions in hopes of reducing Gender-based violence in Cape Town.She is also part of Hunguta collective, having exhibited at the 2019 Oslo Triennale on a project titled Disruptive (de)growth Repository of Southern Ecosystems, addressing the archiving of spatial practices in sub-Saharan Africa as a means of subverting the assumed objectivity of Western Canonical spatial knowledge production. She is fluent in English; and speaks Xitsonga, Afrikaans and German (CEFR B1).

Solange Mbanefo is a practicing Swiss Architect, and co-director of Matri-Archi(tecture).She previously worked as a Lecture- Assistant and Researcher for the book: African Modernism, Architecture since Independence (Volume.2), in collaboration with the Universität of Basel’s Centre for African Studies and the Critical Urbanism Master program under Architect Prof Manuel Herz, and Professors Kenny Cupers and Sofie Oldfield. As Founder of XIMMA, she dedicates her career to enhance quality of life and increase sustainability through innovative spatial solutions in the rapidly transforming urban and rural developments of the Global South.
Solange has a multi-cultural background and has lived, studied, and worked in Switzerland, Nigeria, Thailand, Italy, Brazil, Cuba, Ireland and India. She is fluent in English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, while currently perfecting her German and Basler-Deutsch.

Jane Hall is the inaugural recipient of the British Council Lina Bo Bardi Fellowship (2013) and founding member of the London architecture collective Assemble, who won the Turner Prize in 2015. Jane completed a PhD at the Royal College of Art (2018), where her research looked at the legacy of modernist architects working in both Brazil and the UK. Her particular focus is on interdisciplinary practice between artists and architects, and the emergence of alternative methods for architectural design. Jane is also the author of the book ‘Breaking Ground, Architecture by Women’ (Phaidon, 2019).