Da Hyung Jeong

Da Hyung Jeong is a historian of modern architecture who considers the built environment primarily as a site of the production, negotiation and crystallization of categories of political and social difference. Working at the intersection of architectural and intellectual history, he explores how notions of ethnicity, nationality, humanity and colonial difference circulated among the social sciences and architectural discourse – and how architecture, in turn, played a significant role in their reformulation. The geographic focus of his research is the former Soviet Union and the internal differentiation of its spaces, particularly Central Asia, the Baltic states and Ukraine, alongside postcolonial contexts in East and South Asia.

Jeong is currently working on the manuscript of his second book, Beyond the Cold War Binary: Neo-Humanism, “Third-Worldism” and the Architecture of Self-Determination. It explores intellectual and architectural exchanges between the socialist and postcolonial worlds, complicating established binaries of the Cold War. He is the co-editor of Off-Center: Architectures of Russian and Soviet Imperialism (Leuven University Press, 2027), and his research has appeared in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Architectural Histories and other scholarly publications.

Before joining Penn State University, Jeong held research fellowships and teaching positions at ETH Zurich, Princeton University, the Getty Research Institute and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). His research has been supported by ETH Zurich, the Fondation Le Corbusier, the Mellon Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute. He received his PhD in the History of Art and Architecture from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.

• Habilitation (in progress), Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), ETH Zurich
• PhD, History of Art and Architecture, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
• MA, History of Art and Architecture, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
• BA, Art History, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University

• 2026 Bourse de recherche, Fondation Le Corbusier
• 2025 ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship, ETH Zurich
• 2024 Princeton-Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities
• 2021 Getty Predoctoral Fellowship, Getty Research Institute
• 2019 Mellon-Marron Curatorial Fellowship, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

• “The Project of Independence Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947–1985,” Museum of Modern Art, New York.