Forsyth Visiting Graduate Student
About
Kimberly Gultia is interested in how architecture tracks the formation of identity, particularly how space produces, perpetuates, and is influenced by ideas about race, class, and gender. Focusing on women and domestic architecture in postcolonial Philippines (1946-1986), her dissertation explores perceptions of the ideal urban lowland Christian Filipina and how these values are evident in model urban homes. Through an intersectional approach combined with ethnographic, media, and architectural analysis, she examines how race, class, and gender shaped women’s identities and domestic spaces in a former colony, thereby revealing the development of womanhood, nationhood, and decolonization.
Kim graduated with a Bachelor of Science in architecture, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in interior design, and a Master of Architecture from the University of San Carlos (USC) in the Philippines. While practicing as an architect in Cebu City, she taught at USC’s School of Architecture, Fine Arts and Design for over a decade. Her research has been supported by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Quebec’s Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University and is currently a Forsyth Visiting Graduate Student at the University of Michigan’s Department of History of Art.
