Katherine Vyhmeister
Programme:
Architectural History - PhD/MPhil
Start date:
01/09/2018
Mode of study:
Full time
Research title:
The Material Form of Police: The Production of Public Works in the Transition From Colony to Nation, Chile 1780-1833
Biography
Katherine is a historian of nineteenth-century urban and architectural culture in Chile. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in Architectural History at the University of Edinburgh, funded by the Government of Chile (ANID) through its scholarship programme Becas Chile for Doctoral Studies Abroad. Katherine’s research examines the role played by public works in the nation-building in Chile between 1810 and 1850.
Katherine holds a BA in History (2012) and an MA in the History of Latin America and Chile (2014) from the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile. Both degree theses focused on the long nineteenth-century urban transformation projects in Santiago, specifically the tension between the modern city the Republican authorities aimed to build following independence and the real city they had to deal with.
Before starting her doctoral studies, Katherine held a full-time Teaching Fellow position (on leave) at the History and Social Sciences Department at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, where she taught courses on History of Chile, Latin American History, Art History, and the CORE Curriculum course on Contemporary Civilisation. Since 2015, she is a researcher at the Centro de Estudios del Patrimonio (Centre for Heritage Studies) at the same university.
Katherine is interested in addressing the question of how a society or community is reflected through the city it inhabits, for which her research links urban and architectural history through a cultural history approach. As a researcher at the Centro de Estudios del Patrimonio she has coordinated the following projects: “Register of the Movable Heritage of the Archbishop of Santiago” (2014-2016); “Art Déco Architecture in Santiago” (2015-2016); “The Magellan Strait in History. A Discovery Cartography” (2017-2018); and also participated in the “Register of the Archive, Personal Library, and Heritage Objects of Ignacio Domeyko” (2015-2016).
She also participated as a junior researcher in the project “Italian models in the renovation of sacred spaces in Chile during the 19th century. Valuation of a significant cultural heritage” (2018-2020), funded by the Chilean and Italian governments, which aimed to determine not only Roman religious art influence in the modernisation of the Chilean Church in the nineteenth century but also the translations and appropriations of cultural values, materials, and discourses during the process.
Publications
Journal papers
“The 1875 Palacio de la Exposición in Santiago: A cosmopolitan arena for positioning the nation”, co-author Marcela Drien. Nineteenth Century Contexts, vol. 43, Nº1: 97-116 (published online: 28 Dec 2020).
“La Transformación de Santiago: un caso frustrado de intervención urbana a gran escala, 1872-1929”, EURE, vol. 45, nº 34 (January, 2019): 213-135.
“Usos y apropiaciones del espacio urbano en Santiago de Chile: la transformación de La Cañada en Alameda de las Delicias”, Bifurcaciones, nº 19 (2015): 1-9.
“Proyección y realidad: el Paseo de Santa Lucía a través de la percepción pública y la impresión deextranjeros”, Revista Intus-Legere, Vol. 6, Nº1 (2012): 83-104.