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Professor Andrew Leach

Fellow

  • Club/association Details
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  • Role(s): Fellow
    Level: Full
    Status: Active
  • Bio/Profile
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  • Professor Andrew Leach FRHistS is Professor of Architectural History at the University of Sydney, where he was appointed in 2016. He previously held positions at Griffith University (2010–16, concluding his tenure as Professor of Architectural History), where he helped establish the first professional school of architecture on the Gold Coast; the University of Queensland (2006–10, holding UQ Postdoctoral Research and ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellowships); and the Central (and later Wellington) Institute of Technology (2000–2005). He held the Wallace Fellowship at the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies Villa I Tatti in 2018; was the Stuckeman Visiting Professor in Interdisciplinary Design at Penn State University in 2019 and 2020; and was a Research Fellow of the Department of Architecture of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University, where he was a doctoral candidate (2001–2006), and later a visiting scholar (2009).
    Among more than a dozen books (monographs, and co-edited collections), his What is Architectural History? (Polity 2010) is translated into Chinese, Japanese and Turkish, and is a staple of reading lists around the world. His history Rome(Polity 2016) is also translated into Chinese. His books also include the major outcomes of his ARC Future Fellowship (2012–16)—Gold Coast: City and Architecture (Lund Humphries 2018), GC30+ Documenting the Gold Coast Architecture Awards (URP 2015), and Off the Plan: The Urbanisation of the Gold Coast (CSIRO 2016, with Bosman & Dedekorkut-Howes); and of an ARC DP on the modern reception of the baroque (with Prof. J. Macarthur and Prof. M. Delbeke), The Baroque in Architectural Culture, 1880-1980 (Ashgate 2015).
    From 2006 to 2009 he was co-editor of the regional journal of record Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, and has since 2017 been editor-in-chief of the University of Sydney journal Architectural Theory Review. He was a member and chair of the editorial board of SAHANZ 2010 to 2017; and a member of the SAHANZ executive committee 2001–2003.
    He has lectured at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Max-Planck Institute for Art History (BibHertz, Rome), the British School at Rome, and on dozens of occasions to prestigious universities in Europe, North America and Australia. He gave the 2017 UQ-ARC Centre for the History of Emotions Lecture in Art History lecture at the UQ Art Museum. Leach is an international authority on the life and work of influential Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri—on which he wrote his doctorate (Doctor of Engineering Sciences, Ghent University 2006) and third book (Manfredo Tafuri: Choosing History, A&S Books 2006); as well as a forthcoming translation of juvenilia for MIT Press. He reviews grant applications for funding bodies including the ERC and national competitions for the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Hong Kong, Portugal and Italy, and was a member of the ARC College of Experts 2017–19.
    He writes regularly in the professional architecture press on new projects in New South Wales and Queensland, and has contributed as a juror to the Australian Institute of Architects Queensland Architecture Awards—including as guest speaker at the Gold Coast Regional and Queensland State Awards events in 2023.
    At Sydney he was Associate Dean (Research) in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning, and has directed research in architectural history since 2017—including management of the Penelope Visiting Professorship in Architectural History, supported by a gift from Penelope Seidler. This extends a leadership role as Deputy Director of the Griffith Urban Research Program and membership of the University Council Gold Coast Advisory Group at Griffith University (2014–16).
    Current research includes ARC-funded studies on the history of property alienation in Australia (DP, 2024-27); as well as on the life and works of Romaldo Giurgola (DP 2022-25), architect of Australian Parliament House, extending an engagement initiated by the Department of Parliamentary Services. He is writing a large monograph on the history of the concept of mannerism in architecture; as well as a study of the Queensland parliamentarian and federal senator James Stewart, from whom he descends. He has lived primarily in Queensland since 2006.