Lesley Lokko

Lesley Naa Norle Lokko is a Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic, and novelist.[1] From 2019 to 2020 she was a professor and served as Dean of Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture City College of New York,[2] in addition to juggling teaching positions and different careers in Johannesburg, London, Accra and Edinburgh.[3]

Lesley Lokko
BornLesley Naa Norle Lokko
Dundee, Scotland
OccupationArchitect, academic, novelist
NationalityGhanaian-Scottish
Alma materUniversity College London[1]
Website
www.lesleylokko.com

In 2015, Lokko established the Graduate School of Architecture (GSA) at University of Johannesburg – the first and only African school dedicated to postgraduate architecture education.[4]

Early life and education

Lesley Lokko was born in Dundee, the daughter of a Ghanaian surgeon and a Scottish Jewish mother, and grew up in Ghana and Scotland.[5][6] At the age of 17 she went to a private boarding school in England.[7] She began studying Hebrew and Arabic at Oxford University, but left the programme to go to the United States.[6] She graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, with a BSc(Arch) in 1992, and an March in 1995, and went on to earn a PhD in Architecture from the University of London in 2007.[8]

Career

Much of Lokko's writing contains themes about cultural and racial identity.[9] She regularly lectures in South Africa,[6] and has also taught in the United Kingdom and the United States.[1] She also writes regularly for The Architectural Review.[10] She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa (edited by Margaret Busby).[11]

Lokko has taught architecture all over the globe. Before exiting the United States, She was an Assistant Professor in Architecture at Iowa State University from 1997 to 1998 and at University of Illinois at Chicago from 1998 to 2000.[2] In 2000, she became the Martin Luther King Visiting Professor of architecture at the University of Michigan.[12] She then moved back to the United Kingdom for almost a decade, teaching architecture at Kingston University, University of North London and, finally, University of Westminster, where she established the current Master of Arts programme in the pathway of Architecture, Cultural Identity and Globalisation (MACIG).[2][13]

Lokko was first appointed Visiting African Scholar at the University of Cape Town upon her return to South Africa.[12] Tired of "Europe’s hand-me-downs", Lokko, in partnership with the University of Johannesburg, established the Graduate School of Architecture (GSA) in 2014/2015 and became the director of School. The GSA, modelled after the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and London's Architectural Association, is the only school in the continent committed to post-graduate architecture education and the first one offering Unit System way of teaching.[4]

In 2015, Lokko became Head of the newly established Graduate School and Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg.[14][15][16] She founded the GSA at a time of political imperatives in South Africa and witnessed the large-scale student protests, with the uprising conscious of national identity in postcolonial South Africa.[17]

In June 2019 she was named as dean of the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York, remaining in this position until 2020.[16][18]

Selected published works
  • 2000: White Papers, Black Marks: Race, Culture, Architecture[1]
  • 2004: Sundowners[1]
  • 2005: Saffron Skies[1]
  • 2008: Bitter Chocolate[1]
  • 2009: Rich Girl, Poor Girl[19]
  • 2010: One Secret Summer[20]
  • 2011: A Private Affair[1]
  • 2012: An Absolute Deception[1]
  • 2014: Little White Lies[1]

As editor

References
  1. Lesley Naa Norle Lokko Archived 23 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine, Pan African Writers' Association.
  2. "Lesley Lokko". The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
  3. "About Lesley", Official website
  4. "About the Graduate School of Architecture". Graduate School of Architecture. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
  5. "Lesley Lokko’s books are worth the weight", The Scotsman, 11 July 2012.
  6. "Lesley Lokko talks to Danuta Kean about how to write a blockbuster". Orion Publishing Group.
  7. Mendes-Franco, Janine, "‘They can’t duck the question of decolonisation and transformation anymore’", Global Voices, 24 July 2018.
  8. Lesley Lokko profile at The Conversation.
  9. Kean, Danuta (18 January 2008). "Lesley Lokko: 'Don't ask me about 'black culture', I don't know what it is'", The Independent.
  10. Lesley Lokko at The Architectural Review.
  11. "new Daughters of Africa" at Myriad Editions.
  12. "Lesley Lokko". The Conversation. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
  13. "Architecture MA - Courses | University of Westminster, London". www.westminster.ac.uk. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
  14. Lesley Lokko Archived 20 July 2019 at the Wayback Machine, Academic biography.
  15. "UJ’s Head of the Graduate School of Architecture, Prof Lesley Lokko, provides mentorship on Made in SA TV Show", University of Johannesburg, 2 August 2018.
  16. Russell, James S. (11 June 2019). "Lesley Lokko, Global Architect and Novelist, Appointed Architecture Dean at City College of New York". Architectural Record. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
  17. "The Age of Wildfire". www.e-flux.com. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
  18. Hickman, Matt (7 October 2020). "Lesley Lokko resigns as dean of Spitzer School of Architecture at City College of New York". The Architect's Newspaper. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
  19. Rich Girl, Poor Girl (Hardback) - Lesley Lokko Archived 22 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Orion Publishing Group.
  20. One Secret Summer at Amazon.
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