Min Kyung Lee

Department/Subdepartment
Biography
Min Kyung Lee (B.A. University of Pennsylvania; M.A. Northwestern University; Ph.D. Northwestern University) is a historian of architecture and the built environment. Her education has also included doctoral coursework in urban sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris and masters coursework in oral history at Columbia University.
Her current research area relates to migration histories of the built environment. Mapping Wigs and Plywood: Korean Migration and the American Landscape studies spaces and sites of the Korean diaspora during the post-war period through the global circulation of export products. This research was awarded the New Directions Mellon Foundation Fellowship, as well as fellowships at the Wolf Humanities Center at the University of Pennsylvania and The Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. Currently, she holds a research affiliation with The Courtauld Institute in London and co-founded the with the European Architectural History Network. She has given talks at various institutions on this topic, including the Seoul Mediacity Biennial, University of Toronto, The Institute of Fine Arts NY, University of Kassel, Spitzer School of Architecture CCNY, University of Bologna, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, University of Brighton, and Dumbarton Oaks.
Her monograph, concerns the relationship between mapping and architecture in 19th-century Paris. This research includes histories and theories of orthography, mensuration, quantification, bureaucracy, and cartography, as well as urban design. With this work, she was named the inaugural Banister Fletcher Global Fellow at the University of London, the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, and Queen Mary University. Her research on this subject included programming on that brought historians, urbanists, architects and landscape architects, media theorists and STS scholars, cartographers, computer programmers and technology experts into conversation with each other. She has also held fellowships at The Camargo Foundation, the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte in Paris, and Humboldt University in Berlin.
She teaches various courses in the history of the built environment, including an introduction to the history of modern architecture, seminars about the historical relationship between natural and urban landscapes — specifically studying the emergence of capitalism and the environmental legacy of industrialization— as well as classes about the history of Paris. She has also coordinated a public history research project in collaboration with students and a grassroots resident group to valorize the community stories and voices of the Germantown YWCA. This has included conducting oral histories, archival research, and website development to narrate and curate histories and media linked to the YWCA building.
Her current civic and professional service work includes board membership to Historic Germantown in Philadelphia, the editorial boards of the scholarly journal, Architectural Histories, and , a public-facing forum about the built environment. She also regularly serves as a studio critic at various architecture and design programs. Prior to her academic career, she worked as an environmental activist and community organizer.