The Society of Architectural Historians has hired Dr. Sarah M. Dreller as its Humanities Research Analyst, a newly created position supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Dr. Dreller will be charged with collecting data to help SAH and the Mellon Foundation understand the current status of architectural history in higher education in the United States, part of a 21-month study of the state of the field of architectural history.
The work will include analyzing shifts in higher education as well as surveying a range of organizations that educate the public about the built environment. At the conclusion of the study, Dr. Dreller will write a final report that could potentially help generate initiatives that SAH and the Mellon Foundation could execute to respond appropriately to the trends that have been detected.
Dr. Sarah M. Dreller is a Chicago-based architectural historian and digital humanist. Her research focuses on the connections between architecture and modernity since the industrial and scientific revolutions of the late-18th century. Her next project will study Sigfried Giedion’s appropriation of Einstein’s theory of relativity for Space, Time, and Architecture. Her previous research includes a contextualized analysis of five decades of subscriber data for Time Inc.’s Architectural Forum magazine, a #MeToo/#TimesUp-inspired interactive timeline about the Farnsworth House, reflections on the STEM-themed architectural sculpture at IBM’s first computer research and development campus in Silicon Valley, and a history of Bertram Goodhue’s Greco-Egyptian design for the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Dr. Dreller also recently launched Contingent Talk, a four-episode podcast series about precarious academic labor that she produced for the College Art Association’s CAA Conversations initiative. She taught and/or mentored students continuously for twenty-one years and she specialized in documenting districts during her award-wining predoctoral career as a historic preservation project manager.