Doriane Meyer

Doriane holds a Ph.D. in Architecture focused on the social, political, and psychological dimensions of designed environments. She is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. Her expertise is the analysis of the effects that African slavery left in the built environment with emphasis on the inequality existent in contemporary architecture.

Her research interests are multidisciplinary topics connected to race, inequality, and spatial justice that analyze how people behave in different built environments. She is currently working on her book manuscript Bahian Recôncavo Plantations: Spaces of Power and Resistance, in which she investigates the roots of social disparity in Brazilian society and the influence of space on it. She uses the evidence to show that the growth of informal settlements (favelas) in Brazilian cities and the placement of maids’ rooms on the back of the residences are results of the continued reproduction of power relations with its genesis in colonial plantations.

As a Brazilian architect and urban designer, she has extensive experience in residential, commercial, and institutional projects. She also worked for the Brazilian government, designing dwellings for low-income families, developing popular cooperative projects for new neighborhoods, and urbanizing the living space of underserved communities.