2025 Student Travel Fellowship Program Annual Presentations

March 27, 2026

BY Emily capdeville

The 2025 cohort of Travel Fellowship recipients presented on their work in a lecture this month. These student projects ranged in location; sites of study included Japan, Italy, Morocco, Chile, Germany, New York and Washington, DC. They shared findings from their research and fielded questions from the audience. Before the presentations, guests and fellows mingled while enjoying a selection of bites from the various regions in which they conducted their research. Highlights from the presentations are below:

M.Arch students Delaram Khoshhal & Abbas Ghaffari travelled to New York, New York to study the relationship between fashion and architecture through a series of visits to museums, exhibitions, and design institutions, along with visual analysis performed on urban observations. Their project, "Weaving Worlds: Investigating the Intersection of Fashion and Architecture in New York’s Design Culture," was supported by the Bernard Lemann Fellowship Fund. According to Khoshhal and Ghaffari, "Culture plays a central role in shaping aesthetics, material choices, and narratives within each field. New York, as a global hub for experimental design, offers a unique environment to study how designers blur the boundaries between fashion and architecture through exhibitions, installations, and innovative spatial practices." Their faculty advisor was Mostafa Akbari.

Karina L. Roca, Master of Science in Historic Preservation student, traveled to Spain and Morocco to undertake a study of the ironwork traditions of the area and the movement of those practices along transatlantic trade routes. According to Roca, "through film photo documentation, archival research, and conversations with preservationists, this project traces the circulation and survival of African ironworking knowledge as it moved through trade routes and colonial landscapes." Roca's research was supported by the Ann and Frank Masson Graduate Research Travel Endowed Fund Fellowship.

Kiersten Wilson, Alexandra Trapanese, and Syd Van Slyke, all B.Arch students, traveled throughout central Chile to explore the work of Chilean architect Smiljan Radic. They were particularly interested in looking at the concept of phenomenology in his work, which "originates in human experiences of light, moments of warmth, grief, and joy that occur in light, shadow, and the thresholds between them." According to the research team, "The objective of this research is to use this understanding of phenomenology to inform future architectural design decisions." The group was guided by faculty advisors Andrew Liles, Catherine Sckerl, and Cristobal Molina and their research trip was supported by the Class of 1973 Travel Fellowship.