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Date of lecture: November 4, 2026
Bio
Martha Afflu is a recent graduate of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Rutgers University, where she completed her BSLA and later her Master of Landscape Architecture. Her research focuses on colonial legacies, vernacular architecture, and Indigenous building knowledge systems, particularly within the Ashanti region of Ghana. Grounded in both disciplinary inquiry and her identity as a Ghanaian American with ethnic roots in the region, her graduate thesis examines how Western design frameworks often privilege modern materials, efficiency, and aesthetics while overlooking cultural resilience, ecological adaptation, and heritage continuity. Her work highlights the continuity of vernacular systems and practices not only as material traditions but also as ways of relating to land, labor, and cultural memory.