Francesca Liuni

Francesca Liuni is an Architect, Exhibition Designer, and Assistant Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Department of Interior Architecture. She holds advanced degrees in Architecture from Politecnico di Bari and a Master's of Science in History, Theory and Criticism from MIT, where she participated in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Art, and Urbanism. As a licensed architect in Italy, she bridges academic practice with exhibition design and curatorial work, focusing on the intersection of

• Historical narratives
• Cultural heritage
• Decolonization in design

Her research explores museum architecture's political agency and the recontextualization of historical objects. Recent exhibitions like Out of Antiquity (MIT Maihaugen Gallery, 2024) and Aloof (RISD Waterman Gallery, 2024) interrogate preservation biases and spatial representation of fragmented histories. Her academic work has appeared in

• ICOFOM Study Series 2023 (Politicized Aesthetics)
• Nasser Rabbat's 2018 book The Architecture of the Dead Cities

Liuni's collaborative projects include partnerships with Brown University’s Department of Public Humanities, the Ruth J. Simmons Center for Slavery and Justice, and institutions like the Harvard Museum of History of Science. Her upcoming magazine MOSTRA: Exhibition as a Social Act (Spring 2025) will further investigate these themes.