Cecilia Muzika-Minteer

Cecilia Muzika-Minteer is a PhD student whose research engages with the design of globally scaled extractive networks in the Maghreb during the latter half of the twentieth century. Their work looks at humanitarian and military architectures, extractive infrastructures and post-colonial spatialities to complicate narratives about 20th century resource politics. Cecilia’s work hopes to challenge neoliberal standards of imagining, constructing and enforcing a stable globe through the formation of sustainable development by the United Nation by complicating the narrative about the built environment and designed ecologies of Western Sahara. They are interested in political visions of deserts and sovereignty over natural resources, specifically phosphates, in a post-nuclear world.

Prior to beginning her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, Cecilia obtained her MA in Architectural History from The University of Texas at Austin in 2021, focusing on theories of organicism in planned communities designed by Alvar Aalto, Paulo Soleri and Frank Lloyd Wright. Cecilia earned a BA in History from Westminster College in Pennsylvania in 2013 and spent several years working at Fallingwater, for the Army Corps of Engineers and at the United States Capitol in education and research roles helping to shape their critical perspective on the built environment.