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Dr Fiona Smyth B.Sc.Arch., B.Arch., Ph.D., M.Y.A.I., FR.Hist.S

Assistant Professor in Architectural History and Theory

I am an Assistant Professor in Architectural History and Theory. My research lies at the interface between the history of architecture and the history of science. I am particularly interested in the history of environmental design and its fundamental relevance to cultural studies of sound and the history of ideas. My approach draws strongly on archive work, field work, iconography, and the reception of musical and architectural ideas. It utilises the solid structures of architecture and material culture to identify and explore the intangible aspects of ideas and interdisciplinary interactions. My book, Pistols in St Paul’s: Science, Music, and Architecture in the Twentieth Century (Manchester University Press) investigates musical and architectural experiments in the twentieth century, exploring the concept of building as instrument, and examining how ideas in music and science became manifest within architectural design.

In 2022, I was awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant for the project Spectres & Camouflage: The Sound of Silence, a five-year undertaking that examines the cross-disciplinary transfers and transformations of knowledge that shaped environmental design for silence in the twentieth century. Prior to that I held a three-year Marie Sklodowska Curie (MSCA) Global Fellowship at Harvard (History of Science) and Trinity College Dublin (Engineering) for a research project entitled Science as Applied to Building which centred around the emergence of acoustics as a branch of building science in Britain. That research explored architecture as both a catalyst for, and an expression of, scientific development. It identified a trajectory of development that unfolded in response to shifting social and political priorities in the first half of the twentieth century and explored its interdisciplinary and international underpinnings.

I have published in Architectural History, the Journal of Construction History, the Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics, Frontiers in Environmental Science and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. I have also authored chapters in books published by the Orpheus Institute, and  the Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini.

My research has been awarded the Newman Medal for Architectural Acoustics by the Acoustical Society of America, the Stanley Smith Prize for Construction History by the Construction History Society, and the Hawksmoor Medal for Architectural History by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. It has been supported by grants from European, British, Irish and US sources including the European Commission, the British Society for the History of Science, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Creative Arts at MIT, and the Royal Irish Academy.

Voices feature strongly in my work, in terms of advocating for inclusion and inclusive practices in education, and also in terms of demonstrating the voices and expert ears of different groups of people whose historical contributions to architecture and acoustics are often overlooked. I am a firm advocate for EDI.

Assistant Professor in Architectural History and Theory

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