Dr Emma Cheatle (she/her)
BA (Hons), MA, ARB, PhD
School of Architecture and Landscape
School Director of Research and Innovation
Senior Lecturer Architecture
+44 114 222 0333
Full contact details
School of Architecture and Landscape
Arts Tower
Western Bank
Sheffield
S10 2TN
- Profile
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I am a fully qualified UK architect and I have a PhD in Architecture (Bartlett, University College London, supervised by Profs Jane Rendell and Penelope Haralambidou) which was awarded the 2014 RIBA President's Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis. From 2015-18 I was postdoctoral research fellow in the Newcastle University Humanities Research Institute (NUHRI). In 2017, I published my first monograph, Part-Architecture: The Maison de Verre, Duchamp, Domesticity and Desire in 1930s Paris (Routledge). I am a member of the Society of Architectural Historians Great Britain (SAHGB) and the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA).
My research is interdisciplinary and aims to examine the political, cultural and social implications of architecture and urban space, with a focus on questions of domesticity, care, gender, health (maternity and illness), decoloniality, and common rights. Committed to promoting architectural humanities as a vital discourse in architecture, I use innovative forms of history/theory and new forms of creative-critical writing which activate the personal and political. I am particularly interested in how autotheory and ethnographic writing uncover embodied, critical understandings of spatial histories and contemporary conditions.
My second monograph Lying in the Dark Room: Architectures of British Maternity (Routledge, 2024) examines the role of architecture and space in historic and contemporary constructions of the maternal body and maternity practices. From 2018–2022 I was part of the AHRC Grant (£1M) 'Wastes and Strays' where I examined health and walking as common rights. My current research examines architectures and spaces of reprodcutive rights.
Recent feminist projects include: a major retrospective on the feminist theorist Jennifer Bloomer for the Journal of Architecture (2024), in collaboration with Hélène Frichot (University of Melbourne); the Bloomsbury Global Encyclopaedia of Women in Architecture 1960–2015 (2025), for which I am the UK Editor.
- Qualifications
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- PhD in Architecture, University College London, 2013
- Part 3 (Professional Qualification) in Architecture, University College London, 1995
- MA in Architecture, University College London, 1993
- BA(Hons) in Architecture, Kingston University, 1989
- Research interests
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My research interests are between the histories and theories of architecture, health, gender and the body. My work aims to activate interdisciplinary forms of architecture-writing that use both personal and theoretical responses to buildings and urban spaces to critically explore the role they play in our lives.
I work on:
Histories and impacts of domesticity, gender and health – from hospitals and clinics, to shelters, hotels and homes, both historical (particularly modernist) and contemporary – see: ‘Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘House’ to bell hooks’ ‘Homeplace’: autofiction and autotheory in architectural writing’. Architectural Histories (2025); Lying-in the Dark Room: Architectures of British Maternity (2024); Part-Architecture: The Maison de Verre, Duchamp, Domesticity and Desire in 1930s Paris (2017); ‘As/saying architecture: a ficto-spatial essay of lying-in’. TEXT: Writing | Architecture, 23(55) (2019);
Histories and futures of urban/common land and landscape – see: Rodgers C, Hammersley R, Zambelli A, Cheatle E, Clarke JW, Collins S, Dee O & O’Neill S. English Urban Commons The Past, Present and Future of Green Spaces (2023); ‘Between Landscape and Confinement: Situating the Writings of Mary Wollstonecraft’ In Frichot H, Gabrielsson C & Runting H (Ed.), Architecture and Feminisms Ecologies, Economies, Technologies (2017).
Intersectional feminist ethnography, autotheory and creative-critical writing on architecture – see: Lying-in the Dark Room: Architectures of British Maternity (2024); 'The gravid ground: stories of bed and street' in Special issue of the Journal of Architecture, Jennifer Bloomer: A Revisitation (2024); ‘Writing walking: ficto-critical routes through eighteenth-century London’ In Frichot H & Stead N (Ed.), Writing Architecture: Ficto-Critical Approaches to a Writing Architecture Bloomsbury (2020); 'Absent Comforts – Walls, Windows, Doors, Holes’ In Kennedy M (Ed.), The Enchanted Interior (2019); ‘Between Landscape and Confinement: Situating the Writings of Mary Wollstonecraft’ In Frichot H, Gabrielsson C & Runting H (Ed.), Architecture and Feminisms Ecologies, Economies, Technologies (2017).
PhD supervision areas
- Creative-critical spatial theory, practice and writing in architecture and urban design;
- Feminist and decolonial theory, practice and pedagogy;
- Urban common land;
- Histories of health and domesticity in modernist architecture; critical and creative spatial analyses of buildings;
- Interdisciplinary topics between art, architecture, spatial design, science, health and literature.
- Publications
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Books
- Lying in the dark room architectures of British Maternity. Routledge. View this article in WRRO
- English Urban Commons: The Past, Present and Future of Green Spaces. Taylor & Francis. View this article in WRRO
- Part-Architecture: The Maison de Verre, Duchamp, Domesticity and Desire in 1930s Paris. Abingdon: Routledge.
Journal articles
- From Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘House’ to bell hooks’ ‘Homeplace’: autofiction and autotheory in architectural writing. Architectural Histories, 12(1). View this article in WRRO
- The afterlife of energy post-carbon and feminist post-work politics. Journal of Architectural Education, 78(2), 638-648. View this article in WRRO
- Introduction: Jennifer Bloomer, a revisitation. The Journal of Architecture, 28(6), 851-870. View this article in WRRO
- The gravid ground: stories of bed and street. The Journal of Architecture, 28(6), 947-965. View this article in WRRO
- ‘O my shining stars and body!’: Mitchell Squire's body photographs. The Journal of Architecture, 28(6), 1022-1032. View this article in WRRO
- Writing-drawing an entangled archival practice. Dimensions. Journal of Architectural Knowledge, 2(3), 377-390. View this article in WRRO
- Editorial: Embodying an anti-racist architecture. field: A Free Journal of Architecture, 8(1), 1-8. View this article in WRRO
- As/saying architecture: a ficto-spatial essay of lying-in. TEXT: Writing | Architecture, 23(55). View this article in WRRO
- Recording the absent in the Maison de Verre. IDEA Journal.
- Editorial — Across Borders: Questions, Practices and Performances. field, 9(1).
- Women in Architecture.
Book chapters
- Writing walking: ficto-critical routes through eighteenth-century London In Frichot H & Stead N (Ed.), Writing Architecture: Ficto-Critical Approaches to a Writing Architecture Bloomsbury
- Absent Comforts – Walls, Windows, Doors, Holes In Kennedy M (Ed.), The Enchanted Interior (pp. 59-79). Laing Gallery
- Fiction In Hvattum M & Hultzsch A (Ed.), The Printed and the Built Architecture, Print Culture and Public Debate in the Nineteenth Century Bloomsbury Publishing
- Between Landscape and Confinement: Situating the Writings of Mary Wollstonecraft In Frichot H, Gabrielsson C & Runting H (Ed.), Architecture and Feminisms Ecologies, Economies, Technologies Routledge
- Part-architecture: the manifest and the hidden in the Maison de Verre and the Large Glass (or towards an architectural unconscious) In Holms L & Hendrix JE (Ed.), Architecture and the Unconscious Routledge
- To Look at the Maison de Verre (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close To, for Almost an Hour, Again In de Sousa E & Wooller K (Ed.), Propositions Ideology in Transparency
Conference proceedings
- Climate health/care: a low carbon-points pedagogy. 2021 ACSA/EAAE Teachers Conference: Curriculum for Climate Agency: Design (in)Action. Virtual, 24 June 2021 - 24 June 2021. View this article in WRRO
- Lying in the dark room architectures of British Maternity. Routledge. View this article in WRRO
- Research group
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Situated Humanities
- Grants
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2019–2022
AHRC Major Award (£850,000) Wastes and Strays: Wastes and Strays: The Past, Present and Future of Urban Common Land [Co-I]
- Teaching interests
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My teaching promotes architectural humanities and critical thinking in the history and theory of architecture. As Director of Architectural Humanities for five years, I coordinated the content of humanities modules with an emphasis on the importance of the study of architectural humanities to architectural education, and on decolonising the curriculum.
I supervise postgraduate dissertations in the masters programmes. I supervise undergraduate dissertations with particular interest in critical creative practices, and walking as practice and theory. I supervise a number of PhD students (see Research Interests for topics).
- Teaching activities
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Across all the humanities and research modules in architecture.
I supervise postgraduate dissertations in the masters programmes. I supervise undergraduate dissertations with particular interest in critical creative practices, and walking as practice and theory. I supervise a number of PhD students (see Research Interests for topics).
- Professional activities and memberships
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- School Director of Research and Innovation (2024–ongoing)
- School Director of One University (2022–2024)
- Director of Architectural Humanities (2021–2025)
- Head of External Relations (2019–2022)
- Leader of PhD by Design (2018–2022)
- Programme Co-Leader MAUD (2020–2022)
- Programme Co-Leader MAAD (2018–20)
- AHRC Major Award Research Co-Investigator (2019–2022)
- Post-doctoral Research Fellow Newcastle University (2015–18)