Dr David Burns is a Senior Tutor (Research) and Lead, Media Studies, a unit he initiated in 2016. He has over two decades of international experience in tertiary education in colleges of architecture, art, and design. From 2009-2016, he was the founding director of Photography and Situated Media at the University of Technology Sydney. He holds a PhD from Goldsmiths, an MSc in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University, and a BArch from the University of Tennessee. David is a co-founder of the Fiction Feeling Frame research collective and N curatorial collective.
David's RCA profile
burns.art
Sarah Akigbogun is a transdisciplinary practitioner, a PhD researcher at the Bartlett School of Architecture, an Architect, filmmaker. She is also trained as an actor. She is interested in the human condition in architecture and cities and in using the tools of a storyteller as a method of exploration. She is founding director at Studio Aki, one of Wallpaper’s Emerging practices of 2021, and of theatre collective Appropri8. A large part of Sarah’s work is Advocacy within architecture she is a former Vice Chair of Women In Architecture UK and founder of The XXAOC (Female Architects of Colour) Project. Sarah was director of the film She Draw-She Builds, around which the current incarnation of WIA was reformed. Her current film for XXAOC, explores the histories and stories of female architects of colour. Her writing includes pieces for the Carnegie Museum of Art¬¬, AJ, Parlour, Inflection Journal V08.
studioaki.london
Riccardo is an architect, editor and researcher working at the intersection of migration studies and critical ecologies. Riccardo co-leads together with Helen Brewer the MA City Design studio focused on ‘migrant’ circulations and geographies. His work examines the politics of migration, resistance to bordering practices, and concepts of belonging, identity, and citizenship. Riccardo is a PhD student at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the editor of the book series Research Architecture: Pedagogies, Politics and Practices (Spector Books).
Alison Bartlett is an architectural designer and researcher whose work takes the form of writing, drawing and material explorations that seek to formalise the political and aesthetic operativity of historical objects. Based in London, she has recently completed her MPhil at the Architectural Association, in which she investigated the production of nationalist identities entombed within architectural artefacts. She continues to pursue these topics as an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art.
Ayanna Blair-Ford is a multifaceted creative based in London, adeptly merging her roles as an award-winning set designer/art director, filmmaker, architectural researcher, designer, and playwright. With a foundational background in architectural design, she has worked at practices such as Hawkins/Brown and 59 Productions, as well as with a range of other multidisciplinary artists. Her personal work as a visual artist, sound designer, and musician deeply explores diasporic narratives and themes of identity and belonging. Central to her ethos is the drive to consistently challenge and redefine conventional western methodologies and narratives. As an Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, Ayanna weaves her architectural research into her teaching, underscoring the significance of narrative-driven design and its socio-cultural ramifications. Her innovative approach to narrative design was recognised with the RIBA Wren Insurance scholarship, further cementing her reputation in both the arts and architectural realms.
Gabriella Demczuk is a Lebanese-American artist, journalist, and spatial researcher whose work focuses on the issues of political ecology, the proprietary modes of abstraction, and colonial/capitalist land practices. Over the last ten years she has been working as a member of the White House press, photographing three presidential administrations, Washington politics, and stories across the U.S. related to immigration and environmental policy for The New York Times, TIME, National Geographic, and various other publications. Recently her political work has been exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in London as part of the show America in Crisis (2022) and her salt prints of ghost forests were presented at Fotografiska in New York City as part of Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest installation at Madison Square Park (2021). She is co-founder of Al-Wah’at, an artist-research collective committed to developing spatial, community, and ecological practices around arid lands and futures. Gabriella holds a graduate degree with distinction from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London and an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts and Journalism from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Raha Farazmand is an artist and architect whose work explores spatial Occupation and change in their abstract and hybrid forms. Engaging with memory, context, emotions, and societal constructs, her process engages digital and analogue tools and mediums, often taking the shape of paintings and drawings, but also moving images, prints and objects. Her work has been presented internationally, including at No Show Space, London (2025); The Royal Drawing School, London (2022,2025); Christie’s, London (2022); Sydney Architecture Festival (2019); London Festival of Architecture (2017); Architectural Association, London (2017); and Winterpalais Belvedere Museum, Vienna (2015), among others. She is currently Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University.
Jermaine Francis is a London-based artist who works within the discourse of photography, landscape, portraiture and moving image. His work has been exhibited at the International Centre of Photography New York, The National Portrait Gallery London, Haus Wien Austria, galeriepcp Paris, Centre of British Photography London, The Saatchi Gallery, Pembroke JCR Gallery Oxford, The Camden Arts Centre, Sherbert Green London, Peckham 24 Photo Festival 2024, The Impression Gallery Bradford, Glass Tank Oxford Brookes University, and the Dulwich picture Gallery in Soulscapes. He is currently associate lecturer in Media Studies at the Royal College of Art and MA Documentary Photography at London College of Communications.
Haoge (Steven) Gan is a designer, writer, and researcher, and the initiator of Metamorphic Zone, a publishing and research platform that connects emerging practitioners across aesthetics, science, and media. He holds a Master of Architecture from Columbia GSAPP and currently teaches at the RCA School of Architecture. Working across individual, collaborative, and institutional frameworks in Europe and Asia, his practice explores the intersections of cosmology, technology, and more-than-human agencies, tracing modes of existence within the Anthropocene.
Georgia Hablützel is co-founder of web-site.info and Diploma Unit Master at the Architectural Association. Her work investigates how image-making influences the perception of subjects, ranging from landscapes and objects to pixels and imagery. With a background in editorial work and publication coordination, Georgia has contributed to monographs, academic journals, and artist books. Her research focuses on the epistemologies of landscape, using legal aesthetics and visual culture to explore preservation protocols, management systems and representation.
Sonia Levy is an artist and research-led filmmaker with a diasporic Berber-Polish background. Her work is marked by site-specific inquiries and interdisciplinary collaborations, critically examining Western expansionist and extractive logics and investigating how these frameworks have historically governed and continue transforming watery worlds. Her practice probes the thresholds that shape and affect the conditions necessary for life to flourish. She is the co-convenor of the collective How Like a Reef. Additionally, she is a member of the Steering Committee at the UN Ocean Decade Coordination Office on Connecting People and the Ocean.
sonialevy.net
Emma is a London-based architect originally from Sweden. Her practice is cantered around themes like place narration, transformation and temporality. Her approach is non-representational and site-specific. Making plays an important part of her work and tends to function as an embodied form of research. First-hand recording usually plays a central role in the development of any undertakings, which as a rule considers social, political questions at their core. Emma obtained her MArch degree from the Architectural Association, where her thesis discussed the commercial transformation of landscape through imagery.
Maria McLintock is a curator, researcher, writer, and educator working across spatial practice, technology, border, and curatorial studies. She has held curatorial positions at MoMA, Ikon Gallery, and the Design Museum, and has collaborated with Somerset House, Serpentine Galleries, Het Nieuwe Instituut, and Framer Framed. She co-runs System of Systems and Interface Architectures, research platforms investigating digital infrastructures, migration, and border regimes, and her writing has appeared in e-flux Architecture, Architectural Review, and MacGuffin. She teaches spatial practice and curatorial studies at Central Saint Martins and the University of Limerick. Raised on the border of Northern Ireland during two intersecting crises, her background has shaped a sustained interest in politics, representation, and spatial justice.
Dr Mirna Pedalo is a London-based architectural practitioner, researcher and scholar interested in the intersection of architecture, urban development and finance in post-conflict societies, particularly in the Western Balkans. Trained as an architect, Mirna holds MAs in Architecture and Visual Cultures from the University of Westminster, and a PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2019, Mirna was a recipient of the RIBA President’s Award for Research in the Cities and Community category, and is one of the founding members of DocomomoBH. She works as an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art, University of Westminster and Oxford Brookes University.
Dr Mhamad Safa is a London-based sound artist and architect whose work explores the intersection of multi-scalar spatial conditions and their sonic make-ups. His practice addresses the aural legacies of traditional subcultures, occultism, armed conflicts, shock and the aftermath of violence. He graduated from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University in 2019 and received his PhD from the University of Westminster in 2024. He is an Associate Lecturer in Architecture and Media Studies at the Royal College of Art in London.
mhamadsafa.com
Linn Phyllis Seeger (she/her) is an artist working with moving image and online media. Her work and writing have appeared at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2021); Foam Amsterdam (2022); ICA London (2022); Kuenstlerhaus Wien (2022); Dazed (2024); Autre Magazine (2022); and others. Her two artist books were published by Skinnerboox (2020; 2022). Recently, Linn Phyllis Seeger was an Artist in Residence at the Con/Crit/Tec residency hosted by CAD+SR in São Paulo (2023), and the Derek Jarman Lab (2023). She was selected as Foam Talent (2022), and the winner of the Lucy Art Residency in Greece (2021).
linn-phyllis-seeger.com
María Montero Sierra is an art historian and curator who is currently head of program of TBA21–Academy. Under the initiative of the Academy, she is developing Fishing Fly, a research project on the relationships between marine and human ecosystems from the prism of eating. Her curatorial projects include “Liquid Intelligence” a co-curated group show at Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (2023), “Becoming Fresh and Salty Drops (of water)” a festival at Ocean Space, Venice (2022), “Frequency Singular Plural,” a cycle of performances at CentroCentro, Madrid (2019) and “En los cantos nos diluimos” at Sala de Arte Joven de la Comunidad de Madrid (2017), along with other collaborations, including “Joan Jonas: Moving Off the Land” at Tate Modern (2018) and TBA21–Academy’s The Current II (2018-20) and The Current III (2021–25). Montero Sierra graduated from the department of art history at the Complutense University of Madrid, in 2006, and obtained her MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York, in 2013.
Hope Strickland is an artist-filmmaker and researcher from Manchester, UK, whose work primarily considers the choices undertaken when we visualise racialised violence, attempting to ask how we might live in a world and relate to one another with care whilst amongst and against systems of power and control. Films move across archival, 16mm and digital practices, merging experimental and documentary-based modes. Hope’s films have screened internationally at film festivals and exhibitions including the 59th New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Arnolfini, Bristol and The Hasselblad Center for Photography at Gothenburg Art Museum. She is shortlisted for the 2025 Jarman Award.
Freya Spencer-Wood is a designer and researcher working at the intersection of spatial politics, environmental justice, queer identity and set design. She is an Associate Lecturer on architecture courses at the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins. Freya was a Design Researcher in Residence at the Design Museum this year and has worked at a range of architecture and design practices including AOC, JA Projects, V&A design studio and We Made That. She graduated from TU Delft in 2019 with a Masters of Architecture, Urbanism & Building Sciences with distinction, where she was awarded the Best Graduate of Architecture 2019.
freyaspencer-wood.com
Joshua Woolford is a transdisciplinary artist working between performance, painting, sculpture, sound, video, and installation. Their work is rooted in cultural research, drawing from literature, music, and art, as well as their own personal experiences of being a member of the queer Black Afro-Caribbean diaspora living in England. Notable exhibitions include live performances at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, as well as exhibiting and performing in multiple institutions across London, including HOME by Ronan Mckenzie, Soho House, Somerset House, Black Cultural Archives, the V&A, Gucci flagship store, Camden Art Centre and Tate Britain.
Sarah Akigbogun (2022-25)
Riccardo Badano (2022-25)
Alison Bartlett (2023-25)
Ayanna Blair-Ford (2023-25)
Ariel Caine (2019, 20, 23)
Ibiye Camp (2020)
Mark Campbell (2022)
Kamil Dalkir (2016-20)
Matthew Darmour-Paul (2020)
Gabriella Demczuk (2023-25)
Ifor Duncan (2019, 21)
Jermaine Francis (2022-25)
Georgia Hablützel (2024-25)
Gabriella Hirst (2020-22)
Daryan Knoblauch (2023, 24)
Mustapha Jundi (2020-22)
Helene Kazan (2018-19)
Keren Kuenberg (2020-22)
Kenzie Larsen (2018)
Joshua Leon (2023, 24)
Sonia Levy (2022-25)
Thandi Loewenson (2022)
Lilly Markaki (2023)
Matteo Mastrandrea (2016)
Marie Munk (2018)
Sam Nightingale (2021-25)
Bahar Noorizadeh (2019-21)
Mirna Pedalo (2019-25)
Hanna Rullman (2021, 22)
Mhamad Safa (2021-25)
Linn Phyllis Seeger (2021-25)
Maria Montero Sierra (2024, 25)
Kelly Spanou (2017-24)
Freya Spencer-Wood (2023-25)
Lennaart van Oldenborgh (2023, 24)
Rosa Whiteley (2022, 23)
Tania Lopez Winkler (2019)
Joshua Woolford (2024, 25)