Rate My Professor Sam Spurr

Associate Professor Sam Spurr is an architectural theorist, critic, and designer in the School of Architecture and Built Environment at the University of Newcastle, part of the College of Engineering, Science and Environment. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of New South Wales in 2008, with a thesis titled Performative Architectures, which investigated how performance strategies could be integrated into digital design processes. Her professional career encompasses teaching positions in architecture, design, and fine arts faculties since 2001, including Senior Lecturer roles at the University of New South Wales Art and Design from 2015 to 2019 and at the University of Technology Sydney's Design, Architecture and the Built Environment from 2008 to 2013. Spurr has extensive international experience, having conducted her doctoral research with a DAAD scholarship in Berlin and contributed to studios, workshops, and exhibitions at global design and art biennales. She frequently serves as a guest critic, external examiner, doctoral assessor, and curriculum reviewer.

Spurr's research centers on Mining Ideology and Coal Capitalism, exploring architecture's agency in revealing Anthropocene complexities through feminist theories of care, collective political subjectivity, ecological systems, and indigenous cosmologies within Australia's Country context. She has advocated for architectural agency and disciplinary evolution, notably co-curating the 2016 Australian Institute of Architects National Conference How Soon is Now? with Ben Hewett and Cameron Bruhn. As co-founder of the collective group N, she has driven exhibitions, symposia, studios, and projects examining conversation's influence on art, architecture, and design. Her fields encompass architecture design, theory, design research, extraction and mining, integrated strategic design, new materialist philosophy, and performance theory. Notable publications include the journal article "Architecture for Complexity: Speculative Design as Enabler of Engagement in Co-Designing Post-Mining Futures in the Hunter Valley" (2024, Sustainability, with S. Carrasco), the creative work Fossil Fables (2023, with E. Kairuz), the chapter "OPEN-CUT (DATA) MINING: Multi-scalar complexity and critical spatial practices" (2020, with E. Kairuz), and "After the event: Speculative projects in the aftermath" (2010, Architectural Design). In 2024, Fossil Fables earned a Gold Medal at the Australian Good Design Awards.