BIO

Dr. Vajdon Sohaili is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Art History and Contemporary Culture. He is an art historian, architectural historian, and critical theorist. Vajdon completed his Ph.D. in Architectural History and Theory at Princeton University, with support from Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Thereafter, he served as a postdoctoral research fellow in Princeton University’s School of Architecture. In addition, Vajdon holds an MA in Art History from the University of Toronto, where he also earned a graduate certificate in Sexual Diversity Studies through the Bonham Centre. Prior to entering academia, Vajdon worked as a professional actor, a commercial illustrator, and an English-as-Additional-Language (EAL) instructor. For ten years, he worked in non-profit communications for the HIV Legal Network, a health and human rights policy institute in Toronto, and as editorial consultant for an international roster of clients, including the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, the European Harm Reduction Network, and various UN-accredited agencies.

Vajdon’s research operates at the intersection of art, architecture, and design. His work considers issues of subjectivity—including psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and embodiment—in both the production and reception of art and architecture, and looks to semiotic systems to examine the ways that visual cultures have historically constituted and reinforced political self-understandings. Invested in principles of decolonization, Vajdon’s research uses visuality as a lens for understanding the fundamental, entangled, and persistent alliances between coloniality and structures of modernity. His current book project examines official works of art and architecture in a cross-section of mid-twentieth century settler colonial societies—including Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), Israel/Palestine, and Canada—exploring how notions of “unity” and “community” were (and are) used to buttress political power and obstruct decolonization.