Faculty

Allyson McDavid is Associate Professor of Ancient Material and Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design.

Her research interests in architectural history span antiquity to the present, with specialization in the archaeology of renovation in monuments and cities of the ancient world.  Drawing from contemporary architectural practice and archaeological fieldwork on sites of antiquity across the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, Allyson integrates theory, practice, and social histories in her focus on practices that underpin circularity and resiliency in the built environment.

Allyson received her MArch and BA in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and holds a PhD in architectural history and archaeology from New York University. Prior to joining Parsons, she taught undergraduate courses in art, architecture and urbanism at New York University’s Department of Art History. Her publications include the forthcoming monograph, The Hadrianic Baths of Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity (Wiesbaden); chapters in Economic Circularity in the Roman and Early Medieval Worlds (Oxford, 2023), Classical New York: Discovering Greece and Rome in Gotham (New York, 2018), Masons at Work: Architecture and Construction in the Pre-Modern World (Philadelphia, 2012), EGERIA: Mediterranean Medieval Places of Pilgrimage (Athens, 2009); and articles in the Journal of Roman Archaeology (2016) and the European Architectural Histories Network (2019).