Itohan Osayimwese, chair of the department of the history of art and architecture at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has been elected vice president of the Society for Architectural Historians. She will serve a two-year term as vice president, followed by a two-year term as the society’s president beginning in 2028.
Dr. Osayimwese currently teaches as a professor of history of art and architecture and of urban studies, with affiliations in Africana studies and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean studies. Earlier in her tenure at Brown, she served as her department’s director of graduate studies. Dr. Osayimwese has also taught at Ithaca College in New York, the College of William & Mary in Virginia, and the University of Washington.
In her research, Dr. Osayimwese focuses on the relationship between political ideologies and the built environment in sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe between 1750 and 1950. She is the author of several books, including Africa’s Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage (Princeton University Press, 2025) and German Colonialism in Africa and its Legacies: Architecture, Art, Urbanism, and Visual Culture (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2023).
A graduate of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, Dr. Osayimwese earned her master of architecture degree from Rice University in Houston and her Ph.D. in the history of architecture from the University of Michigan.
