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Joshua Mardell

Dr Joshua Mardell

  • Admissions Tutor, School of Architecture
Email [email protected]

Dr Joshua Mardell (he/him) is an architectural historian.

Dr Joshua Mardell is an architectural historian whose work centres on twentieth-century British and American conservation culture, with a particular focus on voluntary expertise, informal networks, and activist scholarship. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, co-editor of the Journal of Architecture, and Director of the Victorian Society in America London Summer School.

Joshua is working on a monograph: a transatlantic prosopography of four women whose grassroots networks reshaped mid- to late-twentieth-century heritage. The project recovers forms of expertise historically coded as social or auxiliary rather than scholarly, and examines how informal, place-based practice shaped national conservation culture on both sides of the Atlantic. A related strand of his work addresses queerness and space; he is currently editing a special issue of the Journal of Architecture on ‘Queer Space Research’.

He is the recipient of a Paul Mellon Centre Mid-Career Fellowship (2026–27), supporting research on Billa Harrod and the gendered infrastructures of rural conservation in post-war Britain.

He is thrilled to call the Darwin Building in Kensington – a Grade II-listed landmark built 1960–63 – his academic home.

Key details

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More information

Mid-Career Fellowship, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (2026-27).

Library and Archives Fellow, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (2021-22).

Brian Allen Visiting Fellow, Yale Center for British Art (Spring 2016).

Doctoral Research Fellowship, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), ETH Zurich.

For Queer Spaces: an Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places & Stories:

  • Architectural Reference Book of the Year, Booklaunch Architectural Book Awards (2023). Winner.
  • The Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects Architectural Book of the Year Awards (2023). Winner.
  • Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain Colvin Prize. Nominee.

Good Buildings Have Friends (monograph in progress). A transatlantic prosopography of Margot Gayle, Joan Maynard, Billa Harrod, and Elizabeth Young, examining how their grassroots networks reshaped mid- to late-twentieth-century heritage culture in Britain and America.

'Queer Space Research' special issue of the Journal of Architecture, co-edited with Dr. Ewan Harrison.

Books

Mardell, J. and Adam Nathaniel Furman (eds.) (2022) Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places & Stories, London: RIBA.

Articles

Mardell, J. (2025) ‘Gavin Stamp and the Tradition of the Activist-Scholar in Architectural History’, British Art Studies, issue 26. https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-26/jmardell

Mardell, J. (2024) ‘Towards a Queer Architectural History’, in O. Hopkins (ed.), Towards Another Architecture, Newcastle: Farrell Centre, 159-162.

Mardell, J. (2022) ‘Blackballing Buckler: the letters of John Buckler (1770–1851), the Carter school and the foundations of the Buckler dynasty of antiquarian artists and architects’, Antiquaries Journal, 102. doi.org/10.1017/S0003581522000038

Mardell, J. (2020) ‘Getting into a Scrape: The Buckler Dynasty, Lincoln Cathedral and Mid-Victorian Architectural Politics’. Architectural History, vol. 63, 191-218. doi:10.1017/arh.2020.5

Mardell, J. (2019) ‘On how we ought to be anarchists’: Pat Crooke, John Turner, and dweller-oriented architecture’, Journal of Architecture, vol. 42(6), 829-852. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2019.1686409

Mardell, J. (2018) 'Fidelis ad Mortem': J. C. Buckler, an Oxford College architect’, Oxoniensia, vol. 83, 73-92. http://oxoniensia.org/oxo_volume.php?vol=83

Mardell, J. (2013) ‘Far From the Madding Crowd: John Voelcker & Ruralism in Architecture’, AA Files, vol. 66, 87-99. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23595443

Selected Journalism

Mardell, J (2023) "Ever so 'umble, yet worth keeping", Country Life (December), 36.

Mardell, J. (2023) “Seductive Selections from the Gavin Stamp Archive”, RIBAJ (Mar. 2023): https://www.ribaj.com/culture/activist-scholar-gavin-stamp-archive-paul-mellon-centre-joshua-mardell

Mardell, J. (2019) ‘Cast Iron Reasons for Conservation’ [remembering Margot Gayle], RIBAJ (Nov. 2019): https://www.ribaj.com/culture/margo-gayle-us-architectural-preservation-campaigner-joshua-mardell

Mardell, J. (2019) ‘Pat Crooke 1927-2018’ (obituary): https://www.ribaj.com/culture/patrick-crooke-1927-2018-obituary-self-help-architecture-andrew-derbyshire-john-turner-bbpr

Mardell, J. (2016) “The Buckler Topographical Collection: a dynastical reading”, British Library Picturing Places project:

https://www.bl.uk/picturing-places/articles/a-dynastical-reading-of-the-buckler-topographical-collection

Book Reviews

Mardell, J. (2023) ‘Review of Jane Grenville, Pevsner’s Yorkshire: North Riding (Yale University Press, 2023)’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 165 (November), 1256-1257.

Mardell, J. (2020), ‘Joshua Mardell on the I’Anson Dynasty’, Architectural Research Quarterly, vol. 24.3, 291-294. doi:10.1017/S1359135520000342

Exhibitions

(2025) (With Yanqi Huang) “Architecture Unsung”, an exhibition on the former Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies in York (IoAAS), Borthwick Institute, University of York, April 2025.

(2023) An Activist Scholar: The Gavin Stamp Archive, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London: https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/whats-on/forthcoming/gavin-stamp-archive-display

Select Conference/Session Organisation

(2026) “Experimental Biography”. RCA MRes Symposium. With Prof. Gemma Blackshaw. Invited guests: Professor Dame Hermione Lee and Sara Hudston.

(2025) “Architecture’s Unsung Institutions”, Association of Art Historians’ Annual Conference. With Dr. Kim Förster (University of Manchester) and Yanqi Huang.

(2025) “Fiction, to Fiction, Fictioning”. RCA MRes Symposium. With Prof. Gemma Blackshaw. Invited guests: Hannah Regel, Naomi Pearce, Prof. Rebecca Birrell.

(2024) “Queer(ing) Space(s), from Antiquity to the Present”, Society of Antiquaries of London. October 2024. With Dr. Ewan Harrison (University of Manchester). Keynote: Dr. James Cahill.

(2024) “Queer X Time”, RCA School of Architecture Annual Research Programme, with Gem Barton.

(2023) 60th Anniversary of the Darwin Building, RCA. Public symposium. Invited guests: Stephen Bates, Patty Hopkins, Su Rogers, Hugh Strange, Clare Wright. Cadbury-Brown and Casson Oral History Symposium.

(2022) “Queer Spaces, from Finella to Sissinghurst”, The Twentieth Century Society. Invited guests: Elizabeth Darling and Jane Stevenson.

(2022) “Architectural Dynasties” lecture series, The Victorian Society.

(2021) Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, LGBTQ History Month programming.

Women, Conservation, and Activist Scholarship

Victorian Society in America (2026)

Society of Architectural Historians (USA), Atlanta (2025)

Victorian Society / Victorian Society in America, joint events (2025)

Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (2024)

Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (2023)

The Twentieth Century Society (2019)

Architectural Dynasties

Society of Antiquaries of London, Christmas Miscellany Lecture (2023)

The Victorian Society (2022)

Stirling Memorial Library, Yale University (2019)

Architectural History Seminar, Lincoln College, University of Oxford (2019)

British Association for Victorian Studies, Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln (2018)

University of Stirling, 'Writing Britain's Ruins, 1700–1850' (2017)

Queer Architectures and Spaces

Victoria & Albert Museum (Friday Late) (2023)

Farrell Centre, Newcastle University (2023)

Birkbeck, University of London (2023)

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2023)

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York (2022)

California Preservation Foundation (2022)

Independent School for the City, Rotterdam (2022)

Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (2022)

York Centre for Urban Research, University of York (2022)

Coast is Queer Festival, Brighton (2022)

Milan Triennale (2022)

RIBA Inclusion Festival (2022)

Twentieth Century Society (2022)

Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (2021)

Pedagogy and Professional Practice

Architectural Association (2026, 2022)

Zaha Hadid Architects (2023)

MAKE Architects (2023)

School of Architecture, University of Cambridge (2022)

Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL (2022)

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (2022)

Glasgow School of Art (2022)

Haworth Tompkins (2022)

AHMM Architects (2022)

Karakusevic Carson Architects (2022)

Grimshaw Architects (2022)