AA Projective Cities alum Arielle Lavine wins the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain Dissertation Prize for her MPhil dissertation

AA Projective Cities alum Arielle Lavine’s project, FOREST CHILDREN: How Educations of Indigenous and Settler Children Reinscribe the Colonial Order, has been awarded by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB).

The judging panel commended the project as an exceptional dissertation exploring the history of education systems linked to nature and land within settler colonial societies. The project was handled with outstanding analytical, graphic and emphatic skill. Specifically, it analyses two educational programmes in Canada – the Indian Residential School and the Woodcraft Summer Camp­ ­– with divergent intentions, and reframes these as complimentary colonial strategies for territorial control and cultural colonisation; demonstrating, in the words of the author, that ‘Indigenous dispossession goes hand in hand with Settler possession’.

The panel were particularly impressed by how the author linked the present debate about unceded lands, Indigeneity, truth and reconciliation to a rigorous historical enquiry, and a proposal for a future trajectory. Based on in-depth archival research and including a large body of analytical drawings, the dissertation contributes to knowledge not only about Canada, but also to inform new readings of human interaction with ‘wilderness’ as an aspect of ongoing colonialities.

To read more about the 2024 SAHGB award winners, click here.

Image: Ernest Thompson Seton and Woodcraft Indians conducting a council and war dance at Wyndygoul, Cos Cob, Connecticut, 1908.