Azra Aksamija Promoted to Full Professor

The ACT is thrilled to announce the promotion of Azra Aksamija to the rank of Full Professor. She is one of eleven faculty members in the School of Architecture and Planning to be promoted this year.

Professor Aksamija has been an invaluable member of the ACT community since joining MIT as an Assistant Professor in 2011. In 2018, she was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure, and in 2021, she assumed the role of Director of the ACT Program. Over the course of her tenure at MIT, Professor Aksamija has made notable contributions in her roles as an artist, scholar, and leader.

Professor Azra Aksamija’s work is situated at the intersection of art, design, and historic preservation, characterized by a unique integration of art and scholarship. She employs a diverse array of media to investigate the role of art and architecture in fostering community, memory, and identity, particularly in the context of conflict and crisis. Through her MIT Future Heritage Lab, Aksamija strives to foster collaboration among diverse individuals and organizations, with a view to imagining utopian programmes and realizing transformative projects through transcultural exchange.

Since 2000, Professor Aksamija has had the opportunity to produce 60 artistic projects, participate in 155 exhibitions, and curate 17 shows. Her work seeks to establish cultural platforms that may offer insights into social incongruities in areas affected by colonialism, socialism, and communism. Her research prior to obtaining tenure examined the potential of culture to facilitate dialogue and understanding in contexts where collective memories and identities may conflict. Her work focuses on these dynamics in the postcolonial context of Islamic societies. This inquiry eventually led to her book, Mosque Manifesto (2015), which offered a new perspective on the contemporary mosque as a performative space. Her second book, Museum Solidarity Lobby (2019), took up the question of marginalized art chronologies of post-communist societies and the role of art in addressing the notion of fragmented commons. These works have positioned Aksamija as a prominent figure in the field of transcultural aesthetics and transdisciplinary practice.

Azra Akšamija, Mosque Manifesto: Propositions for Spaces of Coexistence. Berlin: Revolver Publishing, 2015.

Azra Akšamija, Museum Solidarity Lobby. Berlin: Revolver Publishing, 2019.

Since receiving tenure, Professor Aksamija has continued to make valuable contributions to her field. Her peer-reviewed monograph, Design to Live: Everyday Inventions from a Refugee Camp (MIT Press, 2021, co-edited with R. Mazjoub (SMACT ’17) and M. Philippou), has gone into a second edition. The book argues for a paradigm shift in humanitarian relief: from aid dependency to self-determination and the inclusion of culturally informed parameters. She has also edited Architecture of Coexistence: Building Pluralism, in collaboration with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (ArchiTangle, 2020), with the objective of disseminating the lessons learned from the successful lived experiences of pluralism generated by the Aga Khan–awarded projects in Europe.

Azra Akšamija, Raafat Majzoub, and Melina Philippou, eds. Design to Live: Everyday Inventions from a Refugee Camp. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021.

Azra Akšamija, ed. Architecture of Coexistence: Building Pluralism. Berlin: ArchiTangle, 2020.

Her work has gained international recognition through a number of notable exhibitions, including solo shows at prestigious venues like the Sharjah Museums and the Bauhaus Museum, and multidimensional installations around the world, from the MIT Museum to the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. She has had the opportunity to participate in several significant international venues, including the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2021 and the Diriyah Biennale of Contemporary Art 2024. Her contributions have recently been recognized with awards from the Architectural League of New York and the Holcim Foundation, as well as an honorary doctorate from Montserrat College of Arts. At the moment, her work is on display at a mid-career retrospective at Kunsthaus Graz in Austria.

As ACT Director, Professor Aksamija has worked to enhance the program’s curriculum, expand exhibition opportunities for students, and foster interdisciplinary collaborations within ACT and across MIT. She has made valuable contributions to MIT’s creative ecosystem through various leadership roles and service activities. She has served on selection committees for public art and prestigious awards and has helped to revitalize campus arts post-pandemic, promoting inclusivity and diversity. She is currently serving as co-chair of the new MIT art festival, which is scheduled to launch in the spring of 2025. In addition to her work at MIT, Aksamija contributes to the broader arts community in a number of other ways, including acting as a nominator for prestigious awards, serving as an international juror, and acting as an external reviewer for other institutions.

Throughout her career, Aksamija has remained committed to bringing art to wider audiences and fostering an ethically engaged aesthetic pedagogy. Her service reflects her belief in art’s potential to inspire, heal, and transform lives, to create positive change, and to nurture a more inclusive, equitable, and vibrant artistic ecosystem, both within and beyond academia.

Professor Aksamija exemplifies ACT’s mission to promote art as a vital force in society. The ACT community extends its congratulations to Professor Aksamija on this well-deserved promotion and looks forward to her continued leadership and pioneering work in the years ahead.

Read about the other promotions here.