FORA.tv Speaker - Deborah van der Plaat

Dr Deborah van der Plaat is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Architectural Theory Criticism History Research Group (ATCH). She has studied at the Australian National University (BA Hons) and the University of New South Wales (PhD). Her research considers the intersection of ideas on art, climate, and modernity in 19th-century British and Australian architectural theory and practice.

A particular focus of her work is the writings of the architect William Lethaby, the critic John Ruskin, and the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. Since 2002, she has also collaborated with art historian Catherine de Lorenzo (UNSW) on nineteenth-century French-Australian photographic exchange and representations of the Australian landscape.

She is an editor of Skyplane (UNSW Press, 2009).