Rina Priyani is a Mellon Postdoctoral Research Associate and incoming Assistant Professor of Architectural History at the University of Virginia in Fall 2026. She obtained her Ph.D. in Architecture: History, Theory, and Society from the University of California at Berkeley in 2024. Prior to joining the University of Virginia, she was a junior faculty at the Institut Teknologi Bandung in Indonesia.

Her research focuses on the racialization of urban space and landscape of colonial and postcolonial Southeast Asia. At KITLV, she is working on her current book project, tentatively titled Building Bandung: Coloniality, Ethnic Identities, and Architectural Practices, which explores how Indonesian intellectuals and visionaries have reimagined the city of Bandung, moving beyond and retrieving its colonial past. She traces Bandung’s transformation from Dutch colonial rule and Japanese occupation to Indonesia’s independence, emphasizing its role in the 1955 Bandung Conference, a key moment in the Non-Aligned Movement. 

Her works on the Bandung Conference venue and its politics of architecture will appear in the edited volume of South-South: Non-Alignment and Cooperation in the Construction of the Global South, National University of Singapore Press (forthcoming, 2026). Current collaborative work includes Transoceanic Disclose: Weaving Architectural [Her]stories project which focuses on the biography of the first generation of twelve Indonesian women architects and city planners during the Bandung moment and curated conversations with women architects and scholars of Indonesia.