Art and Architecture of Migration and Discrimination

Esra Akcan is a Professor in the Department of Architecture at Cornell University. She completed her architecture degree at the Middle East Technical University in Turkey, and her Ph.D. and postdoctoral degrees at Columbia University in New York. Akcan received awards and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, Graham Foundation, Canadian Center for Architecture, American Academy in Berlin, UIC, Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin, Clark Institute, Getty Research Institute, CAA, Mellon Foundation, DAAD and KRESS/ARIT. She is the author of Landfill Istanbul (2004); Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey and the Modern House (2012); Turkey: Modern Architectures in History (with Sibel Bozdogan) (2012); Open Architecture: Migration, Citizenship and the Urban Renewal of Berlin-Kreuzberg by IBA-1984/87 (2018); and Abolish Human Bans: Intertwined Histories of Architecture (2022).

Iftikhar Dadi is John H. Burris Professor in History of Art at Cornell University. He researches modern and contemporary art from a transnational perspective, with an emphasis on methodology and intellectual history. Another research interest examines the film, media, and popular cultures of South Asia. He has authored The Lahore Effect: Cinema Between Realism and Fable (2022), Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (2010) and edited The Lahore Biennale Reader (2022) and Anwar Jalal Shemza (2015). He has co-edited Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2012); Tarjama/Translation (2009); and Unpacking Europe: Towards a Critical Reading (2001). As an artist he collaborates with Elizabeth Dadi. Their work investigates questions of memory and borders in contemporary globalization, and the productive capacities of urban informalities across the Global South.