Lesley Lokko

Professor Lesley Lokko OBE is the Founder and Chair of the African Futures Institute (AFI) in Accra, Ghana. She holds a BSc (Arch), MArch, and PhD in Architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. She was the Founder and Director of the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg (2014—2019). She is the Editor of White Papers, Black Marks: Race, Culture, Architecture (University of Minnesota Press, 2000) and the Editor-in-Chief of FOLIO: Journal of Contemporary African Architecture.

She is currently a Visiting Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture and at University College Dublin. She was appointed Curator of the 18th International Architecture Biennale at La Biennale di Venezia in 2023. In January 2023, she was awarded an OBE "for services to architecture and education" in King Charles’ New Year’s Honours List. In January 2024, she was awarded the UK’s highest architecture award, the RIBA Royal Gold Medal.

In 2004, she made the successful transition from academic to novelist with the publication of her first novel, "Sundowners" (Orion 2004) and has since followed with twelve further bestsellers, which have been translated into fifteen languages. She is a Founding Member of the UN-Habitat Council on Urban Initiatives, was a member of the 17th International Jury of the Venice Architecture Biennale, and is a Trustee of the London-based Architecture Foundation and the London Centre for Humanities. She has lectured and published widely on the subject of race and its relationship to architecture, particularly architectural education. In 2021, she was awarded the RIBA Annie Spink Award for Excellence in Education, and in 2021, the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for Contributions to Architecture. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, the Nigerian Institute of Architects, and the Royal Canadian Institute of Architects. She was recently awarded France’s Grande Médaille de l’Académie d’Architecture.

She is currently a Visiting Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College Dublin, and has held visiting professorships at The Cooper Union, NYC, and University of Virginia. She was appointed Curator of the 18th International Architecture Biennale at La Biennale di Venezia, which opened on 20 May 2023. In January 2023, she was awarded an OBE "for services to architecture and education" in King Charles’ New Year’s Honours List. In January 2024, she was awarded the UK’s highest architecture award, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Royal Gold Medal. Given in recognition of a lifetime’s work and presented on behalf of His Majesty the King, it is awarded to a person or group of people "who have had a significant influence on the advancement of architecture." In April 2024, she was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people in the annual TIME100 list.