The activist community can rejoice today on the news that groundbreaking London-based collective Forensic Architecture (FA) has been given an Institutional Peabody Award for its continued public service and contributions to electronic media.

The group was cited for their work documenting the use of Israeli spyware called Pegasus, the ongoing exhibition Cloud Studies, and myriad investigations into police brutality, war crimes, surveillance culture, environmental racism, and the illegal occupation of Palestine. 

FA’s use of various forms of data, 3D visualization technology, photogrammetry, lidar, and citizen videos was likewise commended for its innovation and incorporation into what the awards jury deemed “sophisticated architectural techniques.” 

The twelve-year-old group founded by Israeli academic Eyal Weizman is coming off of another banner year in which its pursuit of truth and justice has garnered even more right-wing backlash, particularly over an exhibition at the University of Manchester's Whitworth Gallery that was removed and eventually reinstalled after claims of censorship circulated online.

Everybody at FA is really pleased to have been awarded a Peabody!! https://t.co/t5vnLmMi1B
— eyal weizman (@weizman_eyal) March 28, 2022

“They have written a new language of evidentiary techniques called 'counter-forensics' to advance justice and expose state, military, police, and corporate crimes of magnitude on behalf of advocates and affected communities,” the official citation reads. “A brilliant multidisciplinary collective of minds and makers, Forensic Architecture includes architects, computer scientists, artists, machine learning experts, media specialists, archeologists, filmmakers, and engineers who, together, develop coherent and legible ways to gather, analyze, understand, and synthesize the evidence from the scenes of these crimes.”

The group now joins Pulitzer-winning British architect Alison Killing on a recent trend of trained practitioners to be awarded some of journalism’s most coveted prizes.