Rachel Lee

Rachel Lee is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft. She studied Architecture at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, University of Glasgow, graduating with a BArch (Hons), before attaining a Diploma (Master's equivalent) in Architecture at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee. She completed her Doctorate in Engineering at the Habitat Unit, Berlin University of Technology.

 

In her research, Rachel explores histories of colonial and postcolonial architecture and urbanism, investigating how constructed space and material culture intersect with migration and exile, transnational practice, heritage, mobility, and gender. Focusing mainly on South Asia and East Africa, she is committed to collaborative, interdisciplinary research, often supported by digital methods and tools. Her work spans a range of longer-term projects, including the interdisciplinary Simulizi Mijini/Urban Narratives project in Berlin and Dar es Salaam (2015–2017), the ERC-funded METROMOD project (2017–2022), a Mellon Fellowship with the Canadian Centre for Architecture's Centring Africa project (2019–2023), resulting in the book Fugitive Archives, and the Feminist Architectural Histories of Migration project with Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi (2018–2023). She is currently part of the team on the NWO-NRF funded MineLives project, exploring water, energy and food systems in post-extraction landscapes in Gauteng and Limpopo, and is supervising a PhD on the histories of mining in the Witwatersrand.

 

Her work has been published across peer-reviewed journals, books, and online platforms, and she is committed to open access and engagement beyond academia. She is a member of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies and the LDE Centre for Global Heritage and Development.

Research interests: colonial and postcolonial architecture, urbanism, heritage, migration, exile, gender, material culture, digital humanities, transnational practice Countries of focus: Tanzania, South Africa, India.

 

 

- Fenk, Anne-Katrin, Rachel Lee, and Monika Motylińska. ‘Unlikely Collaborations? Planning Experts from Both Sides of the Iron Curtain and the Making of Abuja’. Comparativ, 30 December 2020, 38–59. [Open Access]

- Lee, Rachel. ‘Of Mobility and Earth: Hannah Schreckenbach’s Engagements with Indigenous Architectures in Ghana’. In Between Solidarity and Economic Constraints. Global Entanglements of Socialist Architecture and Planning in the Cold War Period, edited by Christoph Bernhardt, Andreas Butter, and Monika Motylinska, 143–64. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2023.

- Lee, Rachel and Monika Motylińska. ‘Essential Reading? The Institut für Tropenbau’s publications as primers for the design-build movement’ In DesignBuild edited by Vera Simone Bader: Holcin, 2024.

- Adengo, Doreen, Warebi Gabriel Brisibe, Rachel Lee, Monika Motylinska, and Ramota Obagah-Stephen. ‘Ephemeral Archives’. In Fugitive Archives: A Sourcebook for Centring Africa in Histories of Architecture, edited by Claire Lubell and Rafico Ruiz, 159–222. Canadian Centre for Architecture and Jap Sam Books, 2023.

- Lee, Rachel, Arnold Mkony, and Monika Motylińska. ‘Foreign Bodies, Three Hills, and a Hospital’. Canadian Centre for Architecture, (4 May 2021): no page numbers, online publication. [Open Access]
- Lee, Rachel. “Diana Lee-Smith (b.1940).” In The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture 1960-2020, 1st ed., vol. 1, Africa Section, edited by Lori A. Brown and Karen Burns. Bloomsbury, 2025.

- Lee, Rachel. “Erica Mann (Neé Schoenbaum) (1917–2007).” In The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture 1960-2020, 1st ed., vol. 1, Africa Section, edited by Lori A. Brown and Karen Burns. Bloomsbury, 2025.

- Lee, Rachel. “Hannah Schreckenbach (1932–2023).” In The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture 1960-2020, 1st ed., vol. 1, Africa Section, edited by Lori A. Brown and Karen Burns. Bloomsbury, 2025.