Richard Nisa

Richard Nisa is an affiliated faculty member in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University and serves as Program Lead for Sustainability in the IDeATe Program. He holds a PhD in Geography from Rutgers University and a BArch from Syracuse University, where he won the James A. Britton Memorial Prize for Outstanding Thesis. His research bridges infrastructure, technology, and architecture within historical and political contexts, with a focus on U.S. military-carcerality and transnational systems.

Previously, he was an associate professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, earning teaching awards including the 2018 Becton College Teacher of the Year and 2019 Outstanding Honors Faculty Award. He has taught transformative courses in New Jersey prisons through the NJSTEP program, exploring mass surveillance history. Nisa chairs the Urban Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers.

His current book project, The Global Capture Chain: Infrastructures of U.S.-Managed Military Detainment from Truman to Trump, examines spatial tensions in military detention. His articles span journals like Journal of Historical Geography and Radical History Review, addressing topics like automated weapons, humanitarian law, and carceral legacies.

Teaching focuses on ethics in architectural decision-making and research methodologies. Courses include 48-383 Ethics (architecture minors) and 48-620 Graduate Seminar: Situating Research.