Dana Cuff named UCLA's 135th Faculty Research Lecturer

UCLA Architecture and Urban Design’s Dana Cuff has been named UCLA's 135th Faculty Research Lecturer, an annual honor bestowed to two UCLA Academic Senate members with records of exceptional achievement in research or creative activities. Cuff will present her lecture on Thursday, March 7, 2024, from 3:00 to 5:30 p.m., with further details to be announced.

A tradition established at UCLA in 1925, the purpose of the annual Faculty Research Lectures is to recognize distinguished UCLA faculty who demonstrate the university's commitment to research excellence.

Cuff joins this select group of UCLA scholars alongside Professor Daniel Geschwind, Gordon and Virginia MacDonald Distinguished Professor, Neurology, Psychiatry and Human Genetics, who is UCLA's 136th Faculty Research Lecturer; Geschwind will present his talk on Friday, April 19, 2024.

The lecture format provides the recipients a platform to share their scholarship broadly with faculty, students, and the UCLA community and is a recognition of the importance of the wide dissemination of the knowledge generated by UCLA faculty.

Cuff is a widely recognized scholar, educator, practitioner, and activist who engages spatial justice and cultural studies of architecture. Her leadership in urban innovation is widely recognized both in the U.S. and abroad. In 2006, Cuff founded cityLAB, a research and design center that initiates experimental projects to explore metropolitan possibilities; the lab’s “housing first” research demonstrates that affordable, well-designed housing and neighborhoods are attainable foundations of equitable cities.

Since 2013, Cuff has led a cross-disciplinary team at UCLA with a substantial multi-year award from The Mellon Foundation for the Urban Humanities Initiative (UHI). UHI offers students from architecture, urban studies, and the humanities a radical platform for crossdisciplinary, impactful, urban scholarship and action. Cuff publishes and lectures extensively about the modern American metropolis, architectural agency, affordable housing, and architecture’s potential for creating more just cities; she launched her most recent book, Architectures of Spatial Justice, at AUD last June.