Architecture professor Adrienne Economos-Miller has received a 2026 Grant to Individuals from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts to support a new research project examining the life and work of architect, artist, and activist Roberta Dickinson.
Economos-Miller is among 86 individuals selected to receive funding through the Graham Foundation’s 2026 Grants to Individuals program. Chosen from more than 600 submissions, the 54 funded projects include exhibitions, films, publications, research initiatives, site-specific installations, and digital projects that advance new interdisciplinary ideas about architecture and design for audiences around the world.
Economos-Miller’s project, Trans Reconstruction: Roberta Dickinson’s Disobedient Archive, is a collaboration with M.C. Overholt, visiting lecturer at Bryn Mawr College and PhD candidate in the History and Theory of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design.
The research interprets the architectural, activist, and artistic production of transgender designer Roberta Dickinson (1916–1982) as a way to reread architectural history through the lenses of radical political practice and trans history and theory.
Working in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, Dickinson’s architectural career was shaped by her Quaker values and anti-war activism. In addition to several built projects, Dickinson created a body of charcoal drawings, watercolor landscapes, and self-portraits documenting both her transition and Philadelphia’s changing landscapes.
These works are considered among the earliest known representations of gender transition by a trans subject, capturing personal transformation alongside a city undergoing urban renewal and the rise of movements for social and environmental justice.
Through this research, Economos-Miller and Overholt seek to understand Dickinson’s architectural and artistic output as a critical point of origin for reimagining the relationship between trans*ness and architecture.
“My collaborator, M.C. Overholt, and I think that receiving this grant now is a crucial show of support for threatened research from a major institution in architecture and fine arts research,” Economos-Miller said. “We’re thrilled that this funding will allow us to get this project off the ground.”
The grant will support archival research and travel to locations connected to Dickinson’s life and career, providing a foundation for a long-term scholarly and creative endeavor.
“This project will provide historical grounding for much of my already ongoing research, as my prior work and Dickinson’s outlook on architecture and society have proven surprisingly compatible as our early research has revealed more of her life and work,” Economos-Miller said. “Overholt and I will use this grant to begin a long-term project that treats Dickinson’s work as a living archive rather than just historical documents.”
The researchers plan to host workshops, lectures, and begin writing about her in both academic and experimental forms.
Economos-Miller is a builder, writer, and teacher whose work explores labor, materiality, transfemininity, and architectural practice. Her writing brings together labor histories, cultural and literary studies, and embodied action to investigate methods of practice that exist outside architecture’s historically constructed design/construction binary. She joined UWM after receiving her Master of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture and has exhibited and published work nationally.
The Graham Foundation’s 2026 grantees join a worldwide network of individuals and organizations the foundation has supported over the past 70 years. During that time, the foundation has awarded more than $46 million in direct support to more than 5,300 projects.
Founded in Chicago in 1956, the Graham Foundation supports projects that expand contemporary discourse on architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society.