Ana María León Crespo

Ana María León’s work traces how spatial practices and transnational networks of power and resistance shape the modernity and coloniality of the Americas. Her research and teaching foregrounds the agency of populations under struggle and the multiple forms of bias embedded in the built environment and its histories. León is invested in collaborative approaches to learning, teaching, and writing. Attention to multiple critical positions, particularly those of historically underrepresented groups, she argues, grounds our understanding of history in the politics of coliberation.

León is author of Modernity for the Masses: Antonio Bonet’s Dreams for Buenos Aires (University of Texas Press, 2021) and A Ruin in Reverse / Bones of the Nation (ARQ, 2021). She has edited issues of Thresholds (41: Revolution!), The Architectural Theory Review (21:3 Designing Commodity Cultures, with Niko Vicario), and e-flux Architecture (The Settler Colonial Present, with Andrew Herscher); her writing has been published in multiple journals and edited antologies. Working as part of research collectives, León has organized actions at the Venice Biennale (with Detroit Resists, 2016) and the Chicago Architecture Biennial (with the Settler Colonial City Project, 2019). She has co-organized teaching workshops on feminist pedagogy, the south, settler colonialism, and antiracism in architectural history, and is convener and co-editor of the SPACE/RACE, SPACE/GENDER, SPACE/BODY and SPACE/LABOR collaborative reading lists.

Prior to joining the GSD, León was Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan. She holds a Ph.D. in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture from MIT, an M.Des.S. with distinction from the GSD, an M.Arch. from Georgia Tech, and a diploma in architecture from UCSG Ecuador. She serves on the editorial board of the journals Thresholds and post(s), and has served on the boards of GAHTC (2019–2021), The Architecture Lobby (2019–2021), and SAH (2021–2024). León is co-founder of several collectives laboring to broaden the reach of architectural history, including the Feminist Art and Architecture Collaborative (where she was active 2013–2020), Detroit Resists, Nuestro Norte es el Sur and the Settler Colonial City Project. Additional information and links available at anamarialeon.net.