Invited Speakers

Professor Marcel Vellinga

Holding a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Leiden University (the Netherlands), Marcel has extensive research and teaching experience in the fields of cultural anthropology and international vernacular architecture studies. Over the years he has taught and published on a variety of topics including vernacular architecture, the anthropology of architecture, rural architectural regeneration, Minangkabau architecture, tradition and sustainable development.

Marcel is author of Constituting Unity and Difference: Vernacular Architecture in a Minangkabau Village (KITLV Press 2004); co-author, with Paul Oliver and Alexander Bridge, of the Atlas of Vernacular Architecture of the World (Routledge 2007); and co-editor, with Lindsay Asquith, of Vernacular Architecture in the 21st Century: Theory, Education and Practice (Taylor & Francis 2006) and, with Daniel Maudlin, of Consuming Architecture: On the Occupation, Appropriation and Interpretation of Buildings (Routledge 2014). Marcel is the editor of The Bazaar of Isfahan, which was originally conceived by Ali Bakhtiar, John Donat and Paul Oliver (Argumentum, 2016).

Marcel is the Editor-in-Chief of the second revised edition of the Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, to be published in 2024 (in print and online) by Bloomsbury Publishing. His current research project (supported by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust) focuses on the life and works of the German architect, planner and urban historian Erwin Anton Gutkind. In 2015 he curated the ‘Architecture for All: The Photography of Paul Oliver’ exhibition in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

Marcel is the Director of the Endangered Wooden Architecture Programme.

Professor Abidin Kusno

Abidin joined York University as a Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies in 2015. Before his arrival at York, he was the Canada Research Chair in Asian Urbanism and Culture at the Institute for Asian Research at the University of British Columbia. He also held previous positions at New York University and Binghamton University, State University of New York. Abidin's academic background is in Architectural Design and Engineering (BA from Petra University, Surabaya, Indonesia) and Art History (MA and PhD from SUNY Binghamton).

Abidin's academic work draws upon a range of fields including urban studies, history, politics, cultural studies, architecture, design and geography. His research focuses on Indonesia, especially Jakarta and evolves around the issues of politics, culture and the built environment. He examines the ways in which architecture and urban space shaped politics, environments and political consciousness of different social groups at different moments in the country’s urban history. Abidin's teaching encompasses issues around politics, planning and urbanization in the context global and local power.

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