Doctoral Assistant
Laurin Baumgardt is an urban anthropologist specializing in architecture and built environment research. He is currently a scientific assistant in the lab THEMA within the Institute of Architecture at EPFL and a doctoral candidate in Cultural Anthropology at Rice University. Funded by awards from the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, his doctoral research centered on critical infrastructure and development theory, design and building politics, and housing activism. He ethnographically investigated architectural productions within the context of Cape Town’s entrenched spatial inequality, persistent segregation, and ongoing dispossession. Last year, he received the first prize in the Graduate Student Paper Prize Competition of the Critical Urban Anthropology Association (CUAA). He has also studied and taught at the University of Chicago, University of Florida, and Stellenbosch University in South Africa.