Paul Dobraszczyk

British writer and academic

Paul Dobraszczyk is a British writer and academic whose work addresses architecture, as well as a photographer and visual artist.

Career

Dobraszczyk was educated at Wellingborough School from 1987 to 1992, and then read for a Bachelor of Arts in History of Art and Architecture at the University of Reading from 1995-8. He returned to Reading from 2000-1 to read for a Master of Arts in Visual and Verbal Representation in British Culture 1840-1940. He worked as an editor at ArtBibliographies Modern (ProQuest) after completing the MA. He returned to Reading for a third time to read for a PhD in History of Art and Architecture from 2003-6. His thesis was entitled Into the Belly of the Beast: Spatial Representation and London's Main Drainage System, c. 1848-68. From 2006-10, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in Reading's Department of Typography and Graphic Communication on the Arts and Humanities Research Council project Designing Information for Everyday Life, 1815-1914.[1] He published his first book, Into the Belly of the Beast: Exploring London's Victorian Sewers, with Spire in 2009.[2]

Dobraszczyk taught briefly at Birkbeck before taking up a Leverhulme early career fellowship at the University of Manchester in Art History and Visual Studies from 2011-12. His project was called Function & Fantasy: Victorian Decorative Cast Iron. He held the role of Lecturer in Art History at Manchester from 2013-16.[1] In 2014, he published London's Sewers with Shire Books[3] and Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain: Myth and Modernity, Excess and Enchantment with Ashgate.[4] He took up the role of Lecturer in History & Theory of Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture in 2015.[1] In his time at Bartlett, he has published three edited collections (Function & Fantasy: Iron Architecture in the Long Nineteenth Century,[5] Global Undergrounds: Exploring Cities Within,[6] and Manchester: Something Rich and Strange) and four sole-authored monographs: The Dead City: Urban Ruins and the Spectacle of Decay,[7] Future Cities: Architecture and the Imagination,[8] Architecture and Anarchism: Building Without Authority,[9] and Animal Architecture: Beasts, Buildings and Us.[10]

References

  1. ^ a b c Dobraszczyk, Paul. "Curriculum vitae". Ragpickinghistory.co.uk. Retrieved 20 August 2023.
  2. ^ Reviews:
    • Pike, David L. (2012). "Into the Belly of the Beast: Exploring London's Victorian Sewers, by Paul Dobraszczy". Victorian Studies. 55 (1): 151–3. doi:10.2979/victorianstudies.55.1.151.
    • Hwang, Haewon (2012). "Into the Belly of the Beast, Conceiving the City, and A Mighty Mass of Brick and Smoke". Journal of Victorian Culture. 17 (1): 120–4. doi:10.1080/13555502.2011.611707.
  3. ^ Coverage:
    • Yu, Phoebe (24 June 2014). "Top 10 science and tech books for June: the double helix, addiction, London sewers and the infosphere". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  4. ^ Reviews:
    • Forgan, Sophie (2017). "Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain: Myth and Modernity, Excess and Enchantment by Paul Dobraszczyk (review)". Technology and Culture. 58 (1): 271–273. doi:10.1353/tech.2017.0018.
    • Ferry, Kathryn (2017). "Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain; Myth and Modernity, Excess and Enchantment". Journal of Victorian Culture. 22 (1): 136–9. doi:10.1080/13555502.2016.1234102.
    • Hedrick, Christian A. (2016). "Review: Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain: Myth and Modernity, Excess and Enchantment, by Paul Dobraszczyk". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 75 (3): 370–2. doi:10.1525/jsah.2016.75.3.370.
    • Cubitt, Rachel (2013). "Iron, ornament and architecture in Victorian Britain: Myth and modernity, excess and enchantment by Paul Dobraszczyk". Historical Metallurgy. 47 (2): 165–6.
    • Bremner, G. A. (2016). "Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain". Victorian Studies. 58 (3): 557–60. doi:10.2979/victorianstudies.58.3.18.
  5. ^ Reviews:
    • Thorne, Robert (2017). "Paul Dobraszczyk and Peter Sealy (eds), Function and Fantasy: Iron Architecture in the Long Nineteenth Century; Routledge (Abingdon and New York, 2016), xiv 295 pp. incl. 90 b&w ills, ISBN: 9781472430007, £95.00". Architectural History. 60: 355–357. doi:10.1017/arh.2017.19.
  6. ^ Reviews:
    • Bevan, Robert (25 August 2016). "The Tunnel Through Time: A New Route for an Old London Journey/ Global Undergrounds: Exploring Cities Within - review". Evening Standard. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
    • Smith, Gregory (9 September 2016). "'Global Undergrounds': The Lost, Forgotten, and Hidden Places Beneath Our Feet". Popmatters. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  7. ^ Reviews:
    • Aroleda, Pablo (2018). "Book review: The Dead City: Urban Ruins and the Spectacle of Decay". Urban Studies. 55 (13): 3048–50. doi:10.1177/0042098018786380. hdl:10261/281340.
  8. ^ Reviews:
  9. ^ Reviews:
    • Miller, Keith (13 September 2021). "Squatters, desert cults and climate protestors: new book surveys the architecture of anarchist settlements". The Art Newspaper. Retrieved 11 October 2023.
    • Miller, Timothy (2022). "Architecture and Anarchism: Building without Authority". Utopian Studies. 33 (2): 250–2. doi:10.5325/utopianstudies.33.2.0350.
  10. ^ Discussions:
    • Milburn, Josh (15 May 2023). "Episode 214: Animal Architecture with Paul Dobraszczyk". Knowing Animals. Retrieved 11 October 2023.