Professor Isabelle Doucet (she/her)
School of Architecture and Landscape
Professor of Architecture
Full contact details
School of Architecture and Landscape
Arts Tower
Western Bank
Sheffield
S10 2TN
- Profile
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I joined the School of Architecture and Landscape in February 2025 after having held a professor position at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden (2018-2024). Before then I was based at the Manchester Architecture Research Group (MARG) at the University of Manchester (2009-2018), following the completion of my PhD studies at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands.
I have a longstanding research—and teaching— interest in the societal and environmental responsibilities of architects and urban designers, which I have studied through historical cases (with a focus on “after 1968”), theoretical revisiting, and through methods of inquiry. Located at the intersections with environmental humanities, feminist theory and historiography, my current and ongoing research centres (1) on expanded histories of architecture and activism after 1968 combining oral histories of women in architecture with the critical revisiting of emancipatory theories and practices from an intersectional perspective; (2) on (women as) role models in architecture; and (3) environmental (multi species) storytelling. I am currently preparing two book manuscripts: a research monograph offering an in-depth critical study of the portrayal of women as role models in architecture history, and, together with Hélène Frichot, an edited collection on environmental storytelling in architecture. I am the author of The Practice Turn in Architecture. Brussels after 1968 (Routledge 2015) and editor of Activism at Home. Architects dwelling between politics, aesthetics and resistance (with Janina Gosseye, Jovis 2021) and Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production in Architecture and Urbanism. Towards Hybrid Modes of Inquiry (with New Janssens, Springer 2011). I have also guest-edited several thematic journal issues including the “Resist Reclaim Speculate: Situated Perspectives on Architecture and the City” issue for Architectural Theory Review (with Hélène Frichot, 2018).
As a selected researcher for the Multidisciplinary Research Program “Architecture and/for the Environment” at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal (2018-2019), I focused on histories of multispecies encounters. I have also been a visiting scholar at Yale University (2022), University of Sydney (2018), University of Queensland (2017) and the Brussels Centre for Urban Studies (2015).
Currently I am a member of the Steering Group of the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA) and an advisory board member for the journals Dimensions: Journal of Architectural Knowledge and CLARA Architecture/Recherche. Until 2023, I was an editor for Architectural Histories, the journal of the European Architectural History Network.
- Qualifications
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PhD, Masters and Bachelor Degree in Architecture
- Publications
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Books
- The Practice Turn in Architecture: Brussels after 1968. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd..
Edited books
- Activism at Home. Architects Dwelling between Politics, Aesthetics, and Resistance. Jovis.
- Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production in Architecture and Urbanism. Towards Hybrid Modes of Inquiry. Springer.
Journal articles
- The Postmodernisms of Russell Hall: Exploring Australia’s Changing Architecture Culture Through a Biographical Approach. Fabrications, 34(1), 4-37.
- On Disappearance within Architectural Writing. Thresholds(52), 108-117.
- Stories that resist, ethics that persist: A. J. Lode Janssens’ living experiment in 1970s suburban Belgium. The Journal of Architecture, 28(5), 805-824.
- Metro/Education Montreal (1970): Rethinking the Urban at the Crossroads of Megastructures, Systems Analysis and Urban Politics. Architecture and Culture, 7(2), 179-196.
- Anticipating Fabulous Futures. E-Flux Architecture.
- Architectural Practice and Education “From the Inside Out”. Oase: tijdschrift voor architectuur(102), 91-103.
- Resist, Reclaim, Speculate: Situated perspectives on architecture and the city. Architectural Theory Review, 22(1), 1-8.
- Narrate, Speculate, Fabulate: Didier Debaise and Benedikte Zitouni in Conversation with Isabelle Doucet. Architectural Theory Review, 22(1), 9-23.
- Architecture and the Environment. Architectural Histories, 6(1).
- De Belgische ‘counter’ episode 1965-1980. Stad en architectuur tussen denken, durven en doen. Stadsgeschiedenis, 12(1), 42-49.
- Learning in the ‘Real’ World: encounters with radical architectures (1960s–1970s).. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49(1), 7-21.
- Disruptive Design: on design gestures, breathing, and not-doing (published conversation). Candide: Journal for Architectural Knowledge(10).
- Architecture Wrestling the Social: The “Live” Project as a Site of Contestation. Candide: Journal for Architectural Knowledge(10), 12-40.
- Architecture Between Politics And Aesthetics: Peter Wilson's “Ambivalent Criticality” at the Architectural Association in the 1970s. Architectural Theory Review, 19(1), 98-115.
- Learning from Brussels. An irreductive approach to architectural and urban problématiques ?. Belgeo(1-2), 29-40.
Chapters
- Interspecies Encounters: Design (Hi)stories, Practices of Care, and Challenges In Förster K (Ed.), Environmental Histories of Architecture Canadian Centre for Architecture
- Bus Tour Across the UK In Colomina B, Galan IG, Kotsioris E & Meister A-M (Ed.), Radical Pedagogies (pp. 183-185). The MIT Press
- Drawing as Activism In Colomina B, Kotsioris E, Galan IG & Meister A-M (Ed.), Radical Pedagogies (pp. 104-105). The MIT Press
- Architectural Storytelling: A Space Between Critical Practice and Fragile Environments In Frichot H, Carbonell A, Frykholm H & Karami S (Ed.), Infrastructural Love; Caring for Our Architectural Support Systems (pp. 36-50). Birkhauser
- 1968 and Beyond: The urban struggle on trial? In Moritz E & Moser J (Ed.), Urban Ethics. Conflicts over the Good and Proper Life in Cities (pp. 130-143). Routledge
- Revisiting Environmental Learning: Cities, issues and bodies In Couchez E & Heynickx R (Ed.), Architectural Education Through Materiality: Pedagogies of 20th-Century Design (pp. 130-143). Routledge
- Entangled Histories. Architecture, Women, 1968 In Pech C & Andersson M (Ed.), ArkDes Research Symposium on Architectural History 2018 (pp. 116-125). Arkdes
- Understanding Social Engagement in Architecture: towards situated-embodied and critical accounts In Karim F (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Architecture and Social Engagement (pp. 14-26). Routledge
- Tales of Cities as (Resistant) Practices In Grubbauer M & Shaw K (Ed.), Across Theory and Practice: Thinking through Urban Research (pp. 111-119). Jovis
- ARAU (Atelier de recherche et d’action urbaines): counter-projects In Borasi G (Ed.), The Other Architect Spector and Canadian Centre for Architecture
- Counter-projects and the postmodern user In Cupers K (Ed.), Use Matters. An Alternative History of Architecture (pp. 233-247). Routledge
- Brussels: The Soft Regeneration In Kaminer T, Berg & et al. (Ed.), Houses in Transformation, Interventions in European Gentrification (pp. 130-143). NAI
Book reviews
- Mai 68: L'architecture aussi!. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH), 78(3), 370-371.
Conference proceedings papers
- Tales of Cities as (Resistant) Practices (Reprint). APPROACHES AND METHODS IN ARCHITECTURAL RESEARCH, Vol. 1 (pp 15-24)
- From Le Droit à la Ville to Rechte Räume. Legacies and legends of the Movement for the Reconstruction of the European City.. Architecture and Democracy 1965-1989: Urban Renewal, Populism, and the Welfare State
Website content
- Field Notes on Repair: 5.
- The Practice Turn in Architecture: Brussels after 1968. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd..
- Research group
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Doctoral supervision
I am currently co-supervising two doctoral students: Soscha Monteiro De Jezus (first supervisor prof Janina Gosseye at TU Delft) and Elisabeth Peeters (first supervisor prof Bruno Notteboom at KU Leuven) and have previously (co)supervised five doctoral students to completion at The University of Manchester. I am currently also an advisory commission member for Eline Inghelbrecht (KU Leuven) and Pauline Fockedey (UC Louvain). I have acted as an external doctoral examiner for thirteen students at University College London, ETH Zurich, University of Sydney, Royal Institute of Technology KTH Stockholm, Konstfack Stockholm, Lund University, University of Amsterdam, Ghent University, Université Libre de Bruxelles, and Antwerp University.
I represented Chalmers at the board of the Swedish Architecture Research School called ResArc, which also involved co-organising a symposium at KTH Stockholm in 2023 resulting in the publication Towards the Future of Research Education in Architecture (edited by Catharina Gabrielsson). Within ResArc I developed and taught, in 2022-2023, the international PhD course “Situating Research: Approaches, Ethics, Collaborations, Writing”, involving students from architecture, landscape design, artistic research, arts history, and urban studies from five universities in Sweden (Chalmers, KTH, Konstfack, Malmö and Blekinge), Edinburgh University (UK), TU Delft (The Netherlands), and Aarhus University (Denmark).
- Grants
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“Green Participation. The Sociopolitics of Ecological Landscape Design.” Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)(Main applicant: Bruno Notteboom, KU Leuven, Belgium, 2021-2025).
“Women, Architecture, 1968.” Gender Initiative for Excellence (Genie) at Chalmers University of Technology (2021-2023).
“Women in Architecture Leadership.” (2020-2023) and “Women as Role Models.” (2024), Gender Initiative for Excellence (Genie) at Chalmers University of Technology.
“Counter-Projects: Revisiting the Radical Potential of Architecture 1965–1980.” Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts (Research grant, 2016-2017)
“Borders and Boundaries.” Institute for the Encouragement of Scientific Research and Innovation of Brussels (Prospective Research for Brussels grant, 2004-2007).