The University of Michigan Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning has announced that Jonathan Massey will assume the role of dean starting on August 1, following in the footsteps of Monica Ponce de Leon who left in 2015 to become the dean of Princeton. His deanship will run through 2022.

Massey previously served as dean of architecture and professor at California College of the Arts. Before that, he worked for several significant architecture firms including Frank O. Gehry and Associates (now known as Gehry Partners). From 1994-2001 he taught at Princeton, Barnard, Parsons and Pratt at various times.

Throughout his career, Massey has pioneered transdisciplinary architectural scholarship, perhaps most notably through the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative, a group of scholars who investigate how buildings inform socioeconomic and political changes. He co-edits the online journal, the Aggregate Website.

Massey earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Princeton, a Master of Architecture degree from UCLA, and a doctoral degree in history and theory of architecture from Princeton. 

“Taubman College has excelled by taking Detroit, the Great Lakes region and other sites around the globe as frameworks for research on the challenges and opportunities posed by processes of modernization,” states Massey in a press release. “I am excited to work with U-M students, faculty and staff to generate architecture and planning strategies that expand economic opportunity, increase equitable access to resources, design better health and create the operating system for smart cities.”