Jesse Lockard, PhD

Jesse Lockard is a historian of postwar art and architecture, with special interests in historiography and political philosophy. She holds a PhD in art history from the University of Chicago and is a postdoctoral fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz—Max-Planck-Institut. She is currently writing her first book, which theorizes the oeuvre of the architect Yona Friedman as an anti-fascist project—shaped by the Second World War, migration and internationalism—that reimagines architecture’s role and responsibilities in a democracy. Lockard’s dissertation on Friedman’s early work examined the political potentials of architectural prefabrication and Friedman’s distinctive visual modes of architectural theorizing. As an IIAS Fellow, she contributed to an international research project on the architectural history and theory of mass housing. Lockard received the Graham Foundation's Carter Manny Award and a CLIR Mellon Dissertation Fellowship in the Humanities, among other honors.