Despina Stratigakos, PhD

Despina Stratigakos is a writer, historian, and professor.

Her research explores how power and ideology function in architecture, whether in the creation of domestic spaces or of world empires. She is the author of four books. Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway (2020), winner of the Society of Architectural Historians 2022 Spiro Kostof Book Prize, examines how Nazi architects and planners envisioned and began to construct a model “Aryan” society in Norway during World War II. Where Are the Women Architects? (2016), confronts the challenges women face in the architectural profession. Hitler at Home (2015) investigates the architectural and ideological construction of the Führer’s domesticity. A Women’s Berlin: Building the Modern City (2008), which traces the history of a forgotten female metropolis, won the 2009 German Studies Association DAAD Book Prize. Stratigakos has served as UB Vice Provost for Inclusive Excellence and on the Board of Directors of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House, Society of Architectural Historians, International Archive of Women in Architecture, and Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. She also participated on Buffalo’s municipal task force for Diversity in Architecture and was a founding member of the Architecture and Design Academy, an initiative of the Buffalo Public Schools to encourage design literacy and academic excellence. She received her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College and taught at Harvard University and the University of Michigan before joining the Department of Architecture at the University at Buffalo. During the 2016-17 academic year, she was in residence as a member of the Institute for Advance Study in Princeton.