Dr Elizabeth Musgrave

Research interests

I am an Associate Professor in the Abedian School of Architecture, Bond University and a Registered Architect in Queensland. Prior to my appointment at Bond University, I was an academic in the School of Architecture at the University of Queensland where I was highly regarded for my studio teaching and learning practices. I have been a visiting studio lecturer at UTS Sydney and at University of Tokyo Geidei. I am the recipient of the 2024 Dunbar Fellowship, a travelling scholarship awarded to honour the memory of renown academic and architectural historian, Professor Jennifer Taylor.

My research embraces architectural design, design pedagogy and mid-century modernism. My PhD awarded in 2019, examines the work of Brisbane architect, artist and polemicist John Dalton and establishes Dalton as pivotal in the establishment of an environmentalist approach in architecture in Queensland. John Dalton: Subtropical Modernism and the Turn to Environment in Australian Architecture was published in 2023 by Bloomsbury in their Studies on Modern Architecture series. I have published in the field of subtropical modernism including on the modern diaspora in Queensland and the Northern Territory, Queensland women designers and the emergence of interior design as a profession in Queensland.

A second area of research informs my studio pedagogy and is concerned with making explicit to students the relationship of memory to embedded and tacit design processes and knowledge in the synthesis and realization of ideas in architectural design. The 2024 Dunbar Fellowship extends my research in this area to an investigation of courtyard spaces in traditional and contemporary architect designed housing in the urban centres of Japan.

Sub Study Area:

Architectural Design

Mid-Century Modernism

Queensland Architecture

Tropical Modernism

Constructing Architectural Space