Robin Schuldenfrei’s research and teaching focuses on the history and theory of European and American modern architecture and design. She received her doctorate from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and previously held positions at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dr Schuldenfrei is interested in discursive questions—theoretical and practical—of how discourses and practices of design are shaped by a given period’s own cultural and theoretical critique of its media and objects. Her work asks broader questions about how architecture and its objects relate to other products of society’s design: to works of art, to the production of images, to media and technology. She focusses on objects’ subjectivity, materiality, political agency, and social impact and meaning, seeing them as deeply embedded in their period, culture, and intellectual/theoretical climate. To that end, she utilizes both objects and architecture as cultural indices of society at large in order to illustrate the conscious and unconscious perspectives and values of the society that generated them.

She has lectured widely, including: Columbia University, ETH Zürich, Harvard University, MIT, Royal College of Art, Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, University of Edinburgh, University of Hong Kong, and Yale.

• European 20^th-century Architecture
• Interior Architecture and Design
• German Modernism
• Architectural Theory
• History and Theory of the Object

2024 Shortlist, Booklaunch 2024 Architectural Book Award for Objects in Exile.

2022 Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Production and Presentation Grant for Objects in Exile.

2020-21 Gerda Henkel Stiftung, 15 month fellowship for book project Objects in Exile.

2019 Waterloo Centre for German Studies 2018 Book Prize Finalist, for Luxury and Modernism.

2019 Association of American Publishers 2019 PROSE Awards Finalist, architecture and urban planning category, for Luxury and Modernism.

2016 SAH (Society of Architectural Historians) / Mellon Author Award

2008 College of Architecture and the Arts Research Prize, UIC, for research in Germany.

2007-2008 Graduate Society Fellowship, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University.

2007 Citation of Special Recognition, Carter Manny Award program, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

2007 Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Graduate Summer Travel Grant.

2007 SAH Junior Annual Meeting Fellowship to present a paper at the Society of Architectural Historians' 60th Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, April 11-15, 2007.

2006-2007 Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) Graduate Scholarship, for dissertation research, held at the Technische Universität Berlin (granted 2005, deferred). 

2005-2006 Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, Harvard University, for dissertation research in Berlin. 

2005 ADM-HEA Student Bursary, The Art Design Media Subject Centre, Brighton, England, to present a paper at The Annual Design History Conference, London, England.

2005 “Design~Recline” exhibition awarded second place in the “Best Architecture or Design Show” category by New England AICA (International Associations of Art Critics) for 2004.

2005 “Design~Recline” exhibition publication awarded second place in the NEMA (New England Museum Association) design competition.

2004 Pre-Dissertation Prospectus grant, Graduate Society Fellowship, Harvard University.

2003 Graduate Student Council, Harvard University, Summer Research Grant for dissertation research in Vienna.

2003 Honorable Mention, Effective or Innovative Use of Technology in Teaching, “19th Century Architecture and Urbanism,” Northeastern University.

2002 Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, “Landmarks of World Architecture,” Harvard University.

2002-2003 Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellowship, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University.

2002 Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) Language Fellowship to attend the Goethe Institute, Berlin.

2002 Jens Aubrey Westengard Scholarship, Harvard University, for summer research travel.

2002 John Coolidge Student Fellowship, Society of Architectural Historians, for summer research travel.

2001-2005 Graduate Fellowship, Harvard University.

2001 Kress Foundation Scholarship to attend the Attingham Summer School in England, Summer 2001.

1998-2000 Tuition Grant, Williams College.

1995 Phi Beta Kappa.

• BA History of Art Year 1: 19^th – and 20^th-century Architecture and Design

• BA History of Art Year 1: The Global Political City: Urban Issues in Contemporary Art

• BA History of Art Year 2: The Modern Interior
• BA History of Art Year 2: Frameworks for Interpretation
• BA History of Art Year 3: Lessons in Critical Interpretation
• MA History of Art: Experiencing Modernism: Utopia, Politics, and Times of Turmoil

Current

Rachel Denniston, Curating the ‘Anti-Museum’: Women and the Occult Publics of Abstraction, 1910-45 (The Courtauld, Supervisor).

Phoebe Day, '"A Vast Library Hall": Paris Through the Lens of Walter Benjamin, Germaine Krull and Gisèle Freund'. Supervisor (The Courtauld, Supervisor)

Claudine Seroussi, ‘Continuity and disruption: The French jeweller 1920-1929’ (The Courtauld, co-supervision with Caroline Levitt, PhD supervising taken over from Rebecca Arnold).

Bethany Claus Widick, ‘Rooms of her Own: a Gendered Spatial Analysis of Women’s Professional and Social Clubs in Victorian and Edwardian London’ (The Courtauld, Supervisor).

Michelle Zhu, CI, ‘The ‘Criminal’ Other?: The Politics of Citizenship in the Visual Culture of the Weimar Republic’. (The Courtauld, Advisor, first reader: Prof. Dorothy Price).

Laura C. Jenkins, ‘Civilising Decoration: Historicism and Elite Identity in the Gilded Age Interior’ (The Courtauld, second reader, first reader: Prof. Katie Scott).

Elina Axioti, “Hotel Rooms: Politics of Isolation - Rules of Hospitality” (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Supervisor)

Kathrin Engler, “Patterns of Life – Andrea Zittel's ‘A-Z Enterprise’” (Freie Universität Berlin, second reader, first reader: Prof. Gregor Stemmrich)

Recently completed

Friederike Schäfer, ‘Claiming Space(s): Locating Suzanne Harris’ Dance Practice and Ephemeral Installations within New York City in the 1970s’ (Humboldt University Berlin, 2020)

Lena Hennewig, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, ‘“Uralt, ewig neu” Oskar Schlemmers Bild von Mensch, Raum und Kunstfigur während seiner Tätigkeit am Bauhaus’ (Humboldt University Berlin, 2020)

Nico Janke, 'Die Möbelkunst an der sudlichen Ostseekuste Deutschlands ca. 1780-1850' (Humboldt University Berlin, 2016) 

Sandra König, 'Albinmüller (1871-1941) – Kunstgewerbe zwischen Jugendstil und Werkbund', supervised with Dr Annette Dorgerloh (Humboldt University Berlin, 2015)

Monica Obniski, 'Accumulating Things: Folk Art and Modern Design in the Postwar American Projects of Alexander H. Girard', supervised with Prof. Robert Bruegmann, Prof. Pat Kirkham, Prof. Jonathan Mekinda (University of Illinois at Chicago, 2015)

Sarah M. Dreller, 'The Time, Life, and Fortune of Time Inc.’s Architectural Forum magazine, 1932-64', supervised with Prof. Robert Bruegmann, Prof. Esra Akcan (University of Illinois at Chicago, 2015)

Erica Morawski, 'Designing Destinations: Architecture, Urbanism, and American Tourism in Puerto Rico and Cuba', supervised with Prof. Robert Bruegmann, Prof. Esra Akcan, Prof. Kathryn O'Rourke (University of Illinois at Chicago, 2014)