The Irish Architecture Foundation has elected Kathleen James-Chakraborty as the new Chair of the Board of Directors. We are delighted to have such a distinguished architectural historian join the organisation, and look forward to her contributions as the IAF grows and develops over the coming years.

Kathleen James-Chakraborty is Professor of Art History at University College Dublin. A member of the Royal Irish Academy since 2010, she is also Ireland’s representative to the Congrès internationalaux d’histoire de l’Art and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library. Educated at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, she has taught at the University of Minnesota, the University of California Berkeley, where she was professor of architecture, and the Ruhr Universität Bochum. Her scholarship focuses on the history of twentieth century architecture, especially in Germany. Her publications include Erich Mendelsohn and the Architecture of German Modernism (Cambridge, 1997), German Architecture for a Mass Audience (Routledge, 2000), Bauhaus Culture from Weimar to the Cold War (Minnesota, 2006), and with Anne Fuchs and Linda Shortt, Debating German Cultural Identity since 1989 (Camden House, 2010); Architecture since 1400: A Global Survey will be published by Minnesota in 2013. James-Chakraborty is currently an IRCHSS senior fellow; her project is entitled “Modernist Memory: Architecture and Identity in the Federal Republic of Germany.” James-Chakraborty has lectured at universities in Berlin, Bielefeld, Brussels, Cork, Dortmund, Göteborg, Stuttgart, and at Birkbeck, Warwick, Columbia, Harvard, Michigan, Princeton, and Yale.