Mohammad Gharipour
Mohammad Gharipour is an ACSA Distinguished Professor and professor and director of the Architecture Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. He serves as an affiliate faculty at the National Center for Smart Growth and Persian Studies Program. Dr. Gharipour obtained his PhD in architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Master of Architecture from the University of Tehran.
Gharipour’s scholarship and work has earned him several prestigious national and international awards and grants, including the Society of Architectural Historians (2008), Dumbarton Oaks (2010), National Endowment in Humanities (2015), Fulbright-Hays (2016), Foundation for Landscape Studies (2016), Council of Educators of Landscape Architecture (2016), American Institute of Architects (2018), Fulbright (2019), National Institute of Health (2020), and Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (2024). In 2016, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine named Gharipour as a minority scholar making their mark in U.S. academia.
In addition to organizing and chairing more than thirty panels and conferences, he has presented his research at many international venues, including MIT, Harvard University, Columbia University, University of Adelaide, University of Toronto, Dumbarton Oaks, Indiana University, University of Arizona, University of Sydney, Central European University, Bogazici University, Walters Museum of Art, Center for Jewish History, and Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Dr. Gharipour has published nearly 150 journal papers, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, magazine articles, reviews, interviews, and op-eds. He has also authored, edited, and co-edited fifteen books including Bazaar in the Islamic City (American University of Cairo Press, 2012); Calligraphy and Architecture in Muslim world (Edinburgh University Press, 2013); Persian Gardens and Pavilions (I. B. Tauris, 2013); Sacred Precincts (Brill, 2014); City in the Muslim World: Depictions by Western Travelers (Routledge, 2015); Historiography of Persian Architecture (Routledge, 2015); Urban Landscapes of the Middle East (Routledge, 2016); Synagogues of the Islamic World (Edinburgh University Press, 2017); Gardens of Renaissance Europe and the Islamic Empires (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017); Social Housing in the Middle East (Indiana University Press, 2019); Architectural Dynamics in Pre-Revolutionary Iran (Intellect, 2019); Health and Architecture (Bloomsbury, 2021); Epidemic Urbanism: Contagious Diseases in Global Cities (Intellect, 2021); and Islamic Architecture Today and Tomorrow (Intellect and Chicago State University Press, 2022), and Salutogenic Urbanism: Public Health in the Early Modern City in Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). Epidemic Urbanism was selected for the Book Award from Architectural Research Centers Consortium in January 2023.
His research on synagogues of Iran has been supported by National Endowment for Humanities. Moreover, in the last six years and with the support of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Gharipour has been researching health disparity and the design of community clinics in American cities. This research has been published in several journals including BMC Public Health, Inquiry, Health Environment Research and Design Journal, and International Journal of Architectural Research.
Dr. Gharipour is the director and founder of the award-winning International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA), the director and co-founder of the Epidemic Urbanism Initiative, and the first vice president of the Society of Architectural Historians. He is also the editor of the book series on Health and the Built Environment (Routledge, founded in 2021) and the book series on Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East (Intellect, founded in 2016).