The following message was originally sent by the SAH Office as an email to its entire mailing list on May 22, 2025.
Dear SAH Members,
Thank you for joining us at SAH’s 78th Annual International Conference in Atlanta despite the challenges out there. Your presence and participation made it an engaging, inspiring, and forward-looking gathering. I am especially grateful to our local co-chairs, workshop leaders, session chairs, and tour leaders for their tireless efforts in organizing thoughtful and memorable experiences, and to our extraordinary SAH staff whose dedication and hard work ensured everything ran smoothly from start to finish.
Please join me in congratulating this year’s SAH Fellow Stephen Tobriner, SAH Publication Award winners, and fellowship recipients. Their contributions to the field remind us of the excellence, innovation, and passion that define our community.
We were especially excited to introduce a new series of professional development workshops this year, and I am happy to report that they were a great success. Given the overwhelmingly positive feedback that we received from attendees, these workshops will continue both throughout the year and at future conferences, offering ongoing opportunities for learning, dialogue, and collaboration. I encourage you to stay engaged—whether by submitting session abstracts to our upcoming virtual conference or contributing to SAH CONNECTS, our platform for sharing ideas, research, and experiences throughout the year. We especially welcome submissions from SAH Affiliate Groups and Chapters.
As part of our ongoing conversations, I invite you to attend our upcoming Town Hall scheduled for May 30th. In this open forum, we want to hear from you about the most pressing challenges facing academia—including threats to scholarly freedom and institutional stability—and discuss how SAH can play a greater role in fostering collaboration and advocacy across our community. Your voice is vital to these discussions.
We also recognize that these are challenging times for many in our field, particularly students, early-career scholars and those in precarious positions. As I have repeatedly mentioned, SAH is more than a professional organization—it is a community. And not just any community, but a global one, representing diverse voices, cultures, and perspectives from around the world. Now more than ever, we must lean on one another and work together to uplift and support our colleagues. I invite you to consider volunteering your time and expertise for one of our initiatives. Even small contributions can make a lasting impact.
As part of this commitment to community-building, we are proud to be launching the SAH Mentorship Program in summer 2025. I hope you will consider joining as a mentor or mentee. Our goal is to facilitate meaningful relationships that can guide, inspire, and strengthen us all as we navigate our careers.
Thank you again for your continued dedication to SAH. Together, we can build a more inclusive, resilient, and connected future for architectural history and the global academic community we all cherish.
With gratitude and hope,
Mohammad Gharipour
Chair of the SAH 78th Conference
President, Society of Architectural Historians
