The Global Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Daniel's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
About Daniel
Dan is interested in the intersections between Western architecture and world spatial practices, past and present. Working across architecture, anthropology, ethnography, human geography, material culture, socio-cultural history and urban history, Dan's research combines fieldwork with critical theory to explore how different peoples experience - and give meaning - to everyday spaces.
He is Project Lead on Rethinking Architecture and Empire: intercultural placemaking in James Bay, a transdisciplinary, multi-institution study of intercultural placemaking in Hudson Bay, co-created with the Indigenous Cree communities (£1.18 million AHRC standard grant submitted October 2025, outcome pending).
He is Project Co-Lead for Empire and Place, an innovative interdisciplinary project exploring the legacies of empire across the UK's historic port cities (£1.4 million AHRC standard grant submitted January 2025, outcome pending).
He is also Project Lead for a new project with Performance and Sports Psychology in partnership with the National Trust exploring biohaptic approaches to capturing spatial experience (AHRC standard grant in preparation for submission September 2026, costed £1.3 million).
From 2023 to 25, he was part of the interdisciplinary project team leading the £1.2 million ESPRC-funded ICONIC digital health project developing extended reality platforms to provide remote access to historic sites for older adults in residential homes. He also recently worked on Historic England-funded transdisciplinary project with Marine Science exploring the environmental benefits of historic coastal structures and was Project Lead for the AHRC Impact Accelerator project, Rethinking Georgian Sites with the National Trust, exploring new approaches to the interpretation of historic sites.
Dan writes on theoretical approaches to everyday space and place, including the forthcoming monograph Histories of Space, Place and Experience (invited commissioned by Routledge, 2025), the five-volume Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, co-edited with Marcel Vellinga (Bloomsbury, 2026), On the Occupation, Appropriation and Interpretation of Buildings (Routledge, 2014); and, 'Concepts of the Vernacular' in the SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory (SAGE, 2012).
He has two new spatial history monographs with Oxford University Press: A Night at the Inn: Space, Place, and the Elite Experience of Empire (OUP, 2026); and, British Architecture and its Global Contexts (OUP, forthcoming 2026), an invited commission for OUP's landmark Oxford History of Art series. Previous books include Inner Empire: Architecture and Empire in the British Isles with G. A. Bremner (Manchester University Press, 2024); Building the British Atlantic World with Bernard L. Herman (UNC Press, 2016); The Idea of the Cottage in English Architecture (Routledge, 2016); The Highland House Transformed: Architecture and Identity on the edge of Britain (Edinburgh University Press, 2009).
Internationally recognised as a 'preeminent scholar' of architecture, empire and the everyday (Society of Architectural Historians, USA, 2024), Dan studied Architectural History at the University of St Andrews as an undergraduate (MA Hons, First Class, 1996) and postgraduate (PhD, 2002). He has been a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellow at Dalhousie University, Canada, Research Fellow at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Research Fellow at the Winterthur Museum, Visiting Fellow at UPenn, Visiting Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Scottish Studies, University of Guelph, Canada. His track-record of research grants include a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellowship, AHRC Network Grant, AHRC Mid Career Fellowship, AHRC Impact Fellowship, Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship and ESPRC Standard Grant.
He has been awarded the Allen G. Noble Prize by the International Society for Landscape, Place and Material Culture; the Jeffrey Cook Prize by the Interntational Assocation for the Study of Traditional Environments and History Book of the Year by the Scotsman for The Highland House Transformed.
From 2010 to 2017, he was Research Lead (Uo13 REF Coordinator) for the Plymouth School of Architecture establishing its research environment and leading the School to its first REF submissions (stepping down to take up a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship based at the Stuart Weitzam School of Design, UPenn). Today, he has a research leadership role at the University of Plymouth as Chair of the interdisciplinary Spatial Experiences research group and Faculty Research Lead for Heritage and Culture (developing major grant-funded projects, establishing internal and external interdisiplinary networks, supporting colleagues and enabling new collaborations with external partners).
Dan pioneered concept-led architectural humanities teaching across Plymouth's UG and PGT Architecture programmes. Moving to the School of Humanities he currently teaches World History, Imperial History, Legacies of Empire and Public History and Heritage across BA History and Art History and is Programme Lead of the innovative industry-facing postgraduate programme, MA Heritage Theory and Practice in partnership with the National Trust.
He was Director of the University of Pennsylavnia's European Conservation Summer School. Before moving into academia he worked in the heritage sector for organisations including: English Heritage, Historic Environment Scotland and the Guggenheim, Venice.
He is the founding director of the spin-out heritage consultancy, Plymouth Heritage Praxis. Plymouth Heritage Praxis (PHP) works across a portfolio of partnership heritage projects including policy research and interpretation planning. PHP works through non-academic grant-funded partnerships and contract research with the heritage sector. Current partners include the National Trust, Historic England, Dartmoor National Park, The Box, National Marine Park and Powderham Castle.
Teaching
Programme Lead
- MA Heritage Theory and Practice, 2018 –
- MRes Architecture, 2008 - 14
Module Lead
- World History, 1st year, BA History
- What is History?, 1st year, BA History
- ‘Public History and Heritage’, 1st year, BA History
- ‘History and Heritage: Legacies of Empire’, 2nd year /3rd year, BA History
- ‘The British Atlantic World’, 3rd year BA History
- Cultural Contexts Stream Lead (Stage 1 – 3), BA Architecture, 2008 – 14
PhD supervisor
I have successfully supervised a range of PhD students within the fields of cultural heritage, architectural history and theory and material culture from prison graffiti in Malaysia to female agency in the British country house and the heritage space of rivers.
