Dr Matthew Walker

Matthew is a Bye–Fellow, elected in 2025, and is Assistant Professor in British Architecture at the University's Department of History of Art. He is a historian of seventeenth and eighteenth–century British architecture in its intellectual and global contexts, and teaches our undergraduates on the History of Art course.

Biography

Before joining Cambridge, I was a Lecturer in Architectural History at Queen Mary University of London from 2018 to 2025. Prior to that, I taught in the architecture school of the University of New Mexico, and in the art history department of Oxford University. I also held an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral fellowship at Oxford. I have a BA from Oxford and an MA and PhD from the University of York.

Teaching

At Cambridge, I teach across the History of Art Tripos, with a particular focus on British urban and architectural history, as well as the history of architectural writing and theory. I am currently the director of undergraduate teaching and admissions convenor for History of Art.

Research

My research concerns intellectual engagement with architectural design and practice in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Britain. My first book, Architects and Intellectual Culture in Post–Restoration England was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. I am currently working on two projects. The first is a book, entitled The Greek Revival: a Pre–history. It concerns British and French engagement with ancient Greek and Eastern Mediterranean architecture in the long seventeenth century. It will show that Western European understanding of Greek architecture was more sophisticated and widespread in the period than has previously been thought. The second is an edition of the correspondence of Sir Christopher Wren. In the past, I have published on medical architecture in London in the late seventeenth century, on architectures role in the early Royal Society, and on the administration of the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire.