Laura Kurgan will present a public lecture in Knowlton Hall’s Gui Auditorium at 5:30PM on Wednesday, October 9. The lecture is free and open to the public. Kurgan is Associate Professor of Architecture at Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation, and Planning at Columbia University, where she is Director of the Spatial Information Design Lab (SIDL) and the Director of Visual Studies. Kurgan is engaged in a broad set of work, including the exploration of digital mapping technologies, the ethics and politics of mapping, new structures of participation in design, and the visualization of urban and global data. Her recent research includes a multi-year SIDL project on "million-dollar blocks" and the urban costs of the American incarceration experiment, and a collaborative exhibition on global migration and climate change.

Kurgan’s work has appeared at the Cartier Foundation in Paris, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Whitney Altria, MACBa Barcelona, the ZKM in Karlsruhe, and the Museum of Modern Art (where it is part of the permanent collection). She was the winner of the United States Artists Rockerfeller Fellowship in 2009, and named one of Esquire Magazine's 'Best and Brightest' in 2008. Kurgan has published articles and essays in Assemblage, Grey Room, ANY, Volume, and Else/Where Mapping, among other books and journals.