Study Architecture 
ProPEL Wanda Dalla Costa & Balakrishnan Rajagopal to Keynote
at the 2025 ACSA/EAAE Teachers Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia
For Immediate Release:
Washington, D.C. December 20, 2024 — The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and the European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE) are pleased to announce the keynote speakers for the 2025 ACSA/EAAE Teachers Conference: Wanda Dalla Costa & Balakrishnan Rajagopal.
The upcoming conference’s theme of Conflict : Resolution will explore how architectural education and practice can respond to conflicts through interdisciplinary interactions and new motivations for architectural pedagogy. Hosted by Dalhousie University, the conference will ask how conflict situations can be reframed as sites of design, and what new structures for resolution are possible. Through engaging sessions and tours, the conference hopes to inspire, connect, and challenge. Dalla Costa and Rajagopal will present the opening and closing remarks at the 2025 ACSA/EAAE Teachers Conference that will take place June 12-14, 2025, in Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia. Halifax (Kjipuktuk) is located in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People.
Read on to learn more about the esteemed keynote speakers.
Kicking off the conference with the opening keynote will be Wanda Dalla Costa, AIA, FRAIC, LEED A.P., a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation. Her firm, TAWAW Architecture Collective has offices in both Phoenix and Calgary. At Arizona State University, she is the director and founder of the Indigenous Design Collaborative. Her teaching and research are focused on Indigenous ways of knowing, co-design methodologies, and the resiliency of vernacular architectures. Dalla Costa received an Honorary Doctorate in 2023 from Athabasca University and was recognized as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada and is a YBCA 100 recipient by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a list that celebrates people, organizations, and movements shifting culture through ideas, their art, and their activism. Dalla Costa will present the opening keynote address on June 12, 2025.
Concluding the conference with the closing keynote will be Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing and a professor of law and development at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He founded and directs the Displacement Research and Action Network (DRAN) at MIT and has more than 30 years of experience in researching and publishing on international law, social movements, displacement, land, property and housing. He is a leading participant in the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) Network of scholars and is one of its founders. He is a Counsellor to the American Society of International Law and a member of its Executive Council.
He has published numerous scholarly articles in leading law and social science journals and chapters in various volumes. He is the author/editor of five books including International Law from Below: Development, Social Movements and Third World Resistance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), and most recently Critical Issues in Human Rights and Development (co-editor, Edward Elgar, 2021) and many UN reports as UN Rapporteur. His work has been translated into Chinese, Spanish, and French. He also publishes and features widely in the media on human rights, housing and international law issues. Rajagopal will present the closing keynote address on June 14, 2025.
About the European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE)
The European Association for Architectural Education is an international, membership-based Association organizing architectural schools in Europe. The purpose of the Association is to advance the quality of architectural education and promote the quality of architecture in Europe. The Association provides a forum for generating information on aspects of architectural education and architectural research.
The mission of the Association is to build a network of European schools of architecture, fostering discussions, exchanges and a common policy in Europe to advance the quality of architectural education. The EAAE promotes the interests of member schools as institutions and academic environments. For more information, visit https://www.eaae.be/
About the Association of Collegiate Schools in Architecture (ACSA)
The mission of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) is to lead architectural education and research. Founded in 1912 by 10 charter members, ACSA is an international association of architecture schools preparing future architects, designers, and change agents. Our full members include all of the accredited professional degree programs in the United States and Canada, as well as international schools and two-and four-year programs. Together ACSA schools represent some 7,000 faculty educating more than 40,000 students.
ACSA seeks to empower faculty and schools to educate increasingly diverse students, expand disciplinary impacts, and create knowledge for the advancement of architecture. For more information, visit www.acsa-arch.org
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Questions
Hanifah Jones
Digital Marketing and Communications Manager
202-785-2324
hjones@acsa-arch.org
