Jay Cephas is an historian of architecture, landscapes, and cities whose research investigates intersections between labor, technology, and subjectivity in the built environment. He analyzes both ordinary and critical spatial practices to recover the latent and as of yet invisible knowledges that are transmitted through the bodies and buildings of urban environments. Jay is the founding director of the Black Architects Archive, an interactive digital index that traces the impact of Black intellectual and physical labor on transforming the American built environment. He is also the founding director of Studio Plat, a geospatial research and development practice that develops products and systems for maximizing social impact design and planning.
Jay is Assistant Professor in the History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University, where he is also a Research Director at the Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities. Jay previously taught at Harvard University, University of Michigan, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Northeastern University, and University of Detroit Mercy. He holds a Ph.D. in History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism from Harvard University and an M.Arch. from the University of Detroit Mercy. Additionally, he was a 2019 W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and has served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Architectural Education, as the Editorial Director for Positions: On Modern Architecture + Urbanism / Histories + Theories, the Editor-in-Chief of Crit, and was a Design + Research Fellow at the Detroit Collaborative Design Center, where he managed building projects for low-income communities.
Jay is a JAE Fellows Advocate and was co-editor, with Igor Marjanovic and Ana Miljacki, of JAE 76:2 Pedagogies for a Broken World.
To reach Jay, email: jay at jaycephas dot com.