Samuel Dubois
Samuel Dubois is a licensed architect (Ordre des architectes du Québec), trained geographer, and historian of the built environment. Born in Thetford Mines, Canada, he holds a BA in Geography from McGill University, a BSc in Architecture from the Université de Montréal, and a Master of Architecture from Carleton University. He has several years of professional experience with award-winning architecture firms in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Canada.
Since 2020, Samuel has been pursuing doctoral studies in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture program at MIT, working under the supervision of Professor Mark Jarzombek. His research interrogates the entanglements between architecture, resource extraction, and cultural identity, with a particular focus on historically marginalized communities in Québec and Canada during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
His PhD dissertation, tentatively titled Arctic Modernities: Architecture and Transcultural Practices in Inuit Nunangat, c. 1850–1950, has been the basis for academic presentations at leading institutions worldwide, including the University of Oxford (2023), the New York Public Library (2024), the Georgia Institute of Technology (2024), the MIT Museum (2024), Carleton University (2025), the University of Porto (2025), and the University of Helsinki (2025).
His writing, in both English and French, has appeared in Pidgin, Divergence in Architectural Research, The Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, and in a digital issue published by the Canadian Centre for Architecture. He is also a contributing author to the forthcoming edited volume Ambition, Utopia and Hubris: Classicism in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2026).
Notably, Samuel co-edited Thresholds 52: Disappearance (MIT Press, 2024), MIT’s peer-reviewed journal of architecture and art, which received the Douglas Haskell Award for Student Journals from AIA New York | Center for Architecture, in recognition of its “regard for intelligent criticism among future professionals.”
Samuel is the recipient of multiple distinctions, including the MIT Presidential Fellowship, the Joseph-Armand-Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, the Martin Eli Weil Prize (for the best essay in Canadian architectural history), the Prix de la Fondation Habitat 67, and the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction’s Excellence Award in Steel Design. His research has been generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, MIT’s Department of Architecture, and MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI).
