Dr David Lewis

Associate Professor of Architectural History and Cultural Heritage

Biography

David Frazer Lewis is an architectural historian whose interests include the architecture of modern Britain and the United States, especially architecture of the period 1880-1940, the design of sacred architecture, and the Gothic Revival. He is Director of Studies for Architectural History and a Fellow of Kellogg College. Prior to joining the academic staff at Oxford, he was an Assistant Professor at the Notre Dame School of Architecture. He has experience in museums and heritage, as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Yale Center for British Art, and has worked for architecture firms in San Francisco and London that specialise in historic conservation.

Dr Lewis's most recent publication is a book about AWN Pugin in the Historic England/Victorian Society's series on Victorian architects. Forthcoming articles explore debates about Gothic Revival in the early twentieth-century United States and factors that influenced the design of the Anglican Cathedral in Cairo.

Dr Lewis holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, an MPhil from Cambridge, and a doctorate from the University of Oxford.

Research interests

I would be happy to discuss graduate supervision with anyone with interests in the field of 19th and 20th century architectural history. Currently, I am supervising DPhil students working on a study of the interiors of Edwardian ocean liners and a project on the architecture of Philip Webb.

Select publications

Books

A.W.N. Pugin (Historic England / Liverpool University Press, 2021)

Articles and book chapters

'Cairo Cathedral and the politics of Liberal Anglican church design,' Reconstruction, Jessica Kelly and Neal Shasore, eds. (Bloomsbury, forthcoming)

'Medieval, Yet Modern: Two Cathedrals and the Search for an American Religious Architecture,' The Classicist 18 (2021), pp.52-59  

Essays on the Gilbert Scott family, 100 Churches, 100 Years, (Twentieth Century Society / Batsford, 2019)   

'Architecture of the Mind: Immersive Experience and the Nineteenth-Century American University Campus,' Experiencing Architecture in the Nineteenth Century, Edward Gillin and Horatio Joyce, eds. (Bloomsbury, 2018)

Chronicle of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, three entries, (Paul Mellon Centre, 2018)

'J.M. Barrie and Fantasy Architecture in Early Twentieth-Century Britain,' Beyond the Garden Party: Edwardian Culture and Eclecticism, Samuel and Sarah Shaw, eds. (Routledge, 2017)                           

'The Ideal of Architecture as Sculptural Mass in Britain, 1910-1940,' The Sculpture Journal (Liverpool), 25:3 (2016), pp 343-360     

'Developing Modernity: Giles Gilbert Scott’s Design for the New Bodleian Library,' Bodleian Library Record, 29 (2016), pp 47-68