Prof Alex Bremner
Job title:
Professor of Architectural History
Role:
Programme Director PhD/MPhil Architectural History
Research Output:
Edinburgh Research Explorer linkBiography
BA (Hons), MArch (Deakin), PhD (Cantab), FRHistS
Alex joined Architecture at the University of Edinburgh in 2005. He read for his PhD at the University of Cambridge (Gonville & Caius College), where, as a Gates Scholar, he specialised in the history and theory of Victorian architecture. Between completing his doctorate and arriving at Edinburgh, Alex was Postdoctoral Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (Yale University, London). He is a recipient of both the Hawksmoor Medal (Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain) and the Founders’ Award (Society of Architectural Historians, USA) for outstanding scholarship in the field of architectural history. His monograph Imperial Gothic: Religious Architecture and High Anglican Culture in the British Empire c.1840-70 (Yale University Press/Paul Mellon Centre) received the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion for 2013 from the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, the William M. B. Berger Prize for British Art History (2014), the Historians of British Art Book Prize (2015), and was shortlisted for the Whitfield Prize, Royal Historical Society (2014).
Alex's research interests include the history of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British architecture; architecture and empire; national identity and its relationship to the wider built environment; architecture, energy, and climate change; and religious architecture (particularly Anglican and Nonconformist cultures in Britain and its colonial empire during the nineteenth century). His particular interest concerns the intersection between European empire and the globalisation of architectural form, knowledge and expertise, including the relationship between energy and corporate power structures. He has published widely on these subjects. For more on Alex and his work, please visit: gabremner.co.uk
Research interests
- Architecture of the Victorian and Edwardian periods
- British imperial and colonial built environments
- Historic relationship between architecture and energy
- Networked infrastructures of global trade and finance
- Historiography of architecture
Degree Programme Teaching
Alex teaches in all areas of the MA Architectural History & Heritage programme at Edinburgh, lecturing in Years 1 and 2 on topics ranging from Ancient Egypt to the present day. He also offers specialist Honours-level (years 3 and 4) subjects in the history of Victorian architecture and the history of British imperial and colonial architecture. Alex also teaches on the flagship MSc Architectural History and Theory programme, offering expertise in post-colonial theory, the historiography of architecture, and architecture and globalisation.
PhD Supervision
Alex also supervises on the PhD in Architectural History programme at ESALA. Past and current students and their projects include:
Íñigo Basarrate, An English Architect in Spain: Five Projects by Edwin Lutyens
Nilina Deb Lal, Building Calcutta: Construction Trends in the Making of the Capital of British India, 1880‒1911
Laura Fernandez Gonzalez, Philip II of Spain and Monarchia Universalis: Architecture, Urbanism, and Imperial Display in Habsburg Iberia, 1561–1598
Sam Grinsell, Urbanism, Environment and the Building of the Anglo-Egyptian Nile Valley, 1880s-1920s
Erin Hammond, Forms of Feeling: Architecture and Emotion in the Victorian Gothic Revival, c. 1840-1875
Lucia Juarez, Trading Nations: Architecture, Informal Empire and the Scottish Cast Iron Industry in Argentina
Stephen McNair, Southern Gothic: Antebellum Ecclesiology in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi
Mohona Tahsin Reza, Bengali Nationalism within the Modern Architectural Inception of Bangladesh, 1947-1971
Jung-Jen Tsai, Metaphors of the Nation: the Architectural Programme of the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek’s Rule in Post-war Taiwan
Emily Turner, Mission Infrastructure Development in the Canadian North, c.1850-1920
Katherine Vyhmeister, Public Architecture in the Nation-Building of Chile 1818-1925
Tommaso Zerbi, The Tricolour, Shield, and Cross of Savoy: 'Sabaudian Medievalism', the Risorgimento, and Neo-Medieval Architecture in Italy, c.1814–1864
Research
Research
Alex’s research focuses on the history and theory of Victorian architecture and design broadly defined, with a special interest in the history of British imperial and colonial architecture. A major theme in his work concerns the impact of empire on built environments in the United Kingdom, considering how buildings, monuments, and urban space were both designed and used as markers of imperial power and prestige. He is currently producing a new survey history of Victorian architecture for the Oxford History of Art series, which will aim to address these concerns.
Other research interests include the relationship between commercial architectures and international trade in the context of empire, especially networked spaces of economic exchange, where Alex has undertaken research on the commercial infrastructure of Jardine, Matheson & Co. in South and South-East Asia during the early nineteenth century. He also has a special interest in the historiographic traditions of architectural scholarship, with a particular concern for the application of broader historiographic frames of reference to the understanding of architecture and the wider built environment, including Transnational, Oceanic, and World/Global historiographies, as well as methods of cultural and historical geography. He is currently developing new ways of considering how catastrophic climate change can be addressed in architectural education and research through a closer examination of the relationship between architecture and energy consumption through time.
Alex's research has received funding from the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
Current PhD students
Erin Hammond
Forms of Feeling: Architecture and Emotion in the Victorian Gothic Revival, c. 1840-1875
Corinne Hoge
Producing Taste and Gender for Profit: The Role of Wallpaper and Carpet Manufacturers in the Creation of The British Victorian Domestic Interior, 1834-1884
PhD Supervision Topics
- Architecture and empire in Britain and the British World
- Nineteenth-century religion and architecture
- Colonial built environments (1550-1950)
- Architecture and trade in the context of empire
- Victorian and Edwardian architectures in Britain
- Architecture, energy, and industrialisation in the nineteenth century
