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PhD Students

Shuyi Yin

Shuyi Yin is a Doctoral Candidate in Historic Preservation at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). She is affiliated with the Columbia Center for Archaeology and Center for Comparative Media.

Her research interests lie in the intersection of heritage preservation, technology and media, geopolitics, conflicts, and global history and networks. Shuyi has presented at conferences such as the Society for Architectural Historians (SAH), the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS), the Association for Preservation Technology (APT), American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), the Memory Studies Association (MSA), and the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC). Her teaching experiences include American Architecture, History and Practice of Historic Preservation, Thesis I, and the Yale Contemporary Architectural Discourse Colloquium on, “Of Other Natures.” She participated in Keller Easterling’s MANY in Dimensions of Citizenship Venice Biennale US Pavilion in 2018. With Anna Gasha, Shuyi co-organized the Columbia University GSAPP Podcast, “Conversations on Monuments, Preservation, and Protest.” Her professional practice includes working at Sou Fujimoto Architects, Neri & Hu Design and Research Office, and Cabinet Magazine.

Shuyi holds a Bachelor of Architecture (B. Arch) degree from Zhejiang University, a Master of Science in Historic Preservation (Conservation Science) from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master of Environmental Science (Architectural and Historic Preservation History advised by Prof. Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen) from Yale University.

Research/Dissertation

Advised by Professor Jorge Otero-Pailos, Shuyi is currently working on her dissertation titled, “A History of 3D Digitization Technology and Its Global Networks in Architectural Heritage Preservation,” which traces the deep histories of technology that influenced the emergence of 3D digitization technologies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries globally. Through archival research that maps the involvement of technologies, agents, and institutions from America, the European Union, and China in pivotal heritage sites worldwide, the dissertation shows the intersecting forces that have come to shape the now ubiquitous architectural heritage digitization technologies and heterogeneous global organizational networks. By focusing on transnational projects and partnerships in which architectural heritage, digitization organizations, funding sources, and legal and policy regulations vary, the research examines techno-heritage-organizational networks as enabling contributors of “soft power” in larger international affairs and geopolitical maneuvering.