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A researcher of Afro-Indigenous communities in the southern United States and Caribbean has joined Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture this fall as a Jeanne and John Rowe Fellow, in order to explore the Great Migration and its impact on the appearance of Chicago public housing.

Sydney Rose Maubert—through her Miami-based practice Sydney R. Maubert LLC—focuses on how the often-erased material aspects and aesthetics of marginalized cultures have affected the architectural terrain of larger communities. Her research has notably focused on the Black Seminoles of Florida, the Gullah and Geechee people of the Lowcountry in South Carolina and Georgia, and the Tainos of the Caribbean.

As part of the Rowe Fellowship, Maubert is teaching a seminar exploring the impact of the Great Migration on Chicago public housing, ranging from its architecture to culture and public policy. The Great Migration saw hundreds of thousands of Black people from the South migrate to northern cities such as Chicago in pursuit of jobs and better lives as their rights were weakened in the South.

Her time as a Rowe fellow will build upon her previous work, including her 2023 exhibitions of “Queen of the Swamp,” which highlighted “how Miami’s Black and Indigenous communities instigated Miami’s original architecture, infrastructure, and present culture,” Maubert says.

“With this ongoing design and research, I will continue developing a body of work that draws upon my existing practice in Miami, affirming how public policy has changed the American landscape, comparing different Black material cultures across the diaspora,” Maubert says.

Maubert honed her architecture skills at the University of Miami and Yale University. She, in turn, wishes to “pay it forward,” by providing mentorship and inspiration to students at IIT’s College of Architecture. “Mentorship was key to my growth,” she says. “I had someone in my corner believing in me as a designer.”

Maubert was the inaugural Cornell Strauch Fellow from 2022–24. In addition to her work at IIT, she has assisted in teaching courses at Yale, Morgan State University, City College of New York, and Miami.

“I hope I can use the education and opportunities I have received to open doors for other students and potentially remain a student for the rest of my life,” she says.

The Jeanne and John Rowe Fellowship was established in 2022 to support promising faculty at the beginning of their careers. Fellows spend two years teaching while pursuing a funded research project intended to advance the study of the built environment across a number of issues, ranging from architecture, urbanism, and landscape architecture, to structures, building systems, professional practice, and more.