University of Maryland Associate Professor of Architecture Michele Lamprakos will join the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) School of Architecture and Planning as a Visiting Associate Professor for the 2026 fall semester.
She will teach two courses in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA)/History, Theory, and Criticism section: a lecture course on cities of the early modern Mediterranean, which she developed at UMD, and a new graduate seminar entitled “Islamic Heritage in Spain: Lives and Afterlives.”
The seminar builds on her forthcoming book Memento Mauri: The Afterlife of the Great Mosque of Cordoba (University of Texas Press, 2027). Built as a mosque in the 8th century, converted into a cathedral in the 13th century, and dramatically transformed in the 16th century with the addition of a choir and presbytery, the hybrid building has been an enduring mystery and the center of controversy up to the present day.
“It will be great to be back at the Aga Khan Program/HTC where I did my PhD,” says Lamprakos. “And especially meaningful to share my recent research with students.”
Established in 1979 through an endowment from His Highness the Aga Khan, the AKPIA at MIT is a leading international graduate program designed to promote, sustain, and increase the study and teaching of architecture in the Islamic world, with a focus on the critical study of the history and historiography of Islamic architecture and urbanism; urgent issues facing cities and landscapes in the contemporary Islamic world; heritage issues; the problems of mass urbanization, informal settlement, migration and forced displacement in the global context; and the quality and conditions of civic space.
Read more about Lamprakos on her School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation biography page.