SAH Announces 2014 H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship Recipient

Architectural historian Patricia Blessing will spend a year visiting sites in nine countries on the prestigious $50,000 H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship

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The Society of Architectural Historians has awarded Patricia Blessing the 2014 H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship. The prestigious $50,000 fellowship allows a recent graduate or emerging scholar to travel for one year to see and experience architecture and landscapes firsthand.

“The H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship gives me the unique opportunity to travel in different regions, to get to know new sites that I have not yet had the privilege of visiting, and to revisit others,” remarked Blessing.

Beginning in the summer of 2015, Blessing will spend a year visiting cities and sites in Turkey, Greece, Bosnia, Albania, Croatia, Italy, Spain, Morocco and Tunisia. Blessing will document her travels with photos and journal entries posted to the SAH Blog each month.

Blessing’s research focuses on architecture and material culture in the fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire and on the relationship between textiles and monumental decoration in medieval Spain. Currently, she works at the Stanford Humanities Center and teaches courses on Islamic art and medieval history at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. degree in art and archaeology from Princeton University in 2012.

While she plans to visit many of the medieval and early modern monuments her research centers on, the fellowship also allows her the chance to explore buildings from other periods and to assemble a broad image collection she can use in her teaching.

“The framework that Professor Brooks established for the fellowship is particularly beneficial, because it allows for travel that is not directly related to a specific research project,” she adds.

Established in 2010 by a bequest from noted scholar and architectural historian H. Allen Brooks, the fellowship is intended to provide emerging scholars the opportunity to study by travel and contemplation—while observing, photographing, writing and sketching— and to acquire knowledge that will contribute to one’s profession and to society. Brooks was an active member and past president of SAH.

Applications for the 2015 award cycle open April 1, 2015. For more information, visit sah.org/brooks.

About SAH
Founded in 1940, the Society of Architectural Historians is a nonprofit membership organization that promotes the study, interpretation and conservation of architecture, design, landscapes and urbanism worldwide. SAH serves a network of local, national and international institutions and individuals who, by vocation or avocation, focus on the built environment and its role in shaping contemporary life. SAH promotes meaningful public engagement with the history of the built environment through advocacy efforts, print and online publications, and local, national and international programs. Learn more at sah.org.