Katerina Bong Named SAH Graduate Student Representative

The Society of Architectural Historians is pleased to announce the appointment of Katerina Bong as SAH Graduate Student Representative on the SAH Board of Directors. In addition to her role as a member of the SAH Board, Bong will serve as chair of the Graduate Student Advisory Committee, advocating for student members and planning activities and programs for SAH and its graduate student community. Her term will run through the end of the annual conference in April 2023.

Bong is a PhD student at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design in the University of Toronto. Her research broadly focuses on early modern European architecture with an interest in the lifecycle of buildings, especially the afterlife, by examining structural failures, demolition, and demise. She examines the undergirding cultural history and early modern reception of failed or failing buildings and connects them to our own concerns about building destruction, functional obsolescence, and heritage preservation in the twenty-first century. Her secondary research concentrates on the material construction and preservation of East Asian architecture, particularly timber buildings from the Joseon dynasty in Korea. 

Bong received a bachelor’s from the University of Toronto and a master’s from the University of Pennsylvania in art and architectural history. She also founded the Volunteer Interpretation Service for North and South Koreans at the University of Toronto and is currently the vice-chair of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario NextGen.