Ruth Lo

Ruth W. Lo received her PhD from Brown University in the History of Art and Architecture. She specialises in the history of modern architecture and focuses on the relationships between food, politics, and the built environment.

Her dissertation, Feeding Rome: Food, Architecture, and Urbanism during Fascist Italy, was a case study on the politicisation of architecture and urban planning to manage alimentary resources. Ruth's essay, "Celebrating the Festa dell'Uva: Invented Traditions, Popular Culture, and Urban Spectacle in Fascist Rome," was published in Food and Architecture at the Table (Bloomsbury, 2016).

As a Rome Prize fellow at the American Academy in Rome from 2013–2015, Ruth organised an interdisciplinary conference, "Italy's Covered Markets: History and Contemporary Reuse" (May 2015), that brought scholars, chefs, farmers, and policy makers into dialogue on the demolition, preservation, and conversion of the structures that provision food. In Spring 2019, Ruth will be a fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. Ruth teaches courses on the city and the senses, architecture and nature, and the history of art and architecture.