Temple University

Martina Merlo specializes in modern and contemporary art, with an intrinsically interdisciplinary approach to their research focus in the visual, sonic, spatial, material and performance cultures of contemporary “house-system” ballroom in the United States, 1980s to present. Particularly, Merlo intends to highlight Philadelphia’s unique culture, beginning from the Onyx Ball in 1989. In approaching this expressly Black and Queer art form, their media study will explore video, photography, and print ephemera as testimony. Merlo plans to bolster this research through cross-disciplinary contextualization in colonial, diasporic, urbanistic, sociological, critical race, and LGBTQIA+ studies. As a musician / multimedia recording artist and designer / architect (of urban-regional to interior scales), Merlo hopes to infuse several facets of their built-environment knowledge and artistic practice to inform their interdisciplinary scholarship, further deepening the exploration of an ultimately trans-spacial, multi-sensory, and multicultural art form. Given their proposed topic’s underrepresentation in academic discourse, Merlo’s investigative (and future professional) interests, too, lie in experimental research methods, alternative forms of writing, digital humanities, oral histories, nontraditional book arts and publishing, and other creative storytelling. 

After receiving their BA in Visual Studies and Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania in 2015, Merlo completed their MSc in Architecture at Politecnico di Milano in 2017, with a dual degree from Politecnico di Torino awarded through the multidisciplinary Alta Scuola Politecnica honors programme. After 5 years as a practicing architect in many of Philadelphia’s prominent studios, and holding particular interest in fostering scholarship and expanding accessibility to research materials, Merlo now works in Temple’s Charles Library as a Resource Sharing practitioner with hopes to continue making significant contributions in the sphere of university library collections: print and digital. Beyond the library, they have several articles featured on Artblog, with further writing, video and photography in other online publications such as NewHive and ArchDaily. Merlo has also contributed to and authored works in independent print matter. 

MSc Architecture - Architectural Design (110 e Lode), Politecnico di Milano, 2017
BA Visual Studies, Architecture, minor in Landscape Studies (Magna cum Laude), University of Pennsylvania, 2015

Advisor: Alpesh Kantilal Patel, PhD