About Mania Taher
Biography
Dr. Mania Taher is an interdisciplinary design researcher, historian, and educator whose work operates at the intersection of design, the built environment, and social inquiry. Her practice centers on human-centered design and object practices, using ethnographic and spatial research methods to understand how people interact with objects, cultures, and environments. Dr. Taher’s research investigates everyday objects as sites of cultural meaning, with a particular focus on how design mediates experiences of identities and displacement. Through close study of vernacular objects and lived environments, she examines how design shapes social relations and embodied experiences across diverse immigrant communities. As a faculty member in industrial design, she teaches foundational and advanced studios that guide students through the full design process, from inquiry and user research to ideation, prototyping, and product realization. Her pedagogy emphasizes critical thinking, iterative making, and the integration of conceptual depth with functional outcomes. In the Spring of 2027, Dr. Taher will collaborate with Deepasri Baul (History) to teach an HRI Interseminars course, titled “Living Between Worlds: Gender, Migration, and the City.” Before arriving at UIUC, she taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and at American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB).
Dr. Taher’s upcoming book project explores the world-making of first-generation Bangladeshi immigrant women in New York, primarily by examining their dwellings and a network of locations within their residential environments. She analyzes her research participants’ physical and sensory ways of reconstructing spatial memories related to their everyday objects, activities, and bodily experiences of transnational displacement through spatial mapping. Her broader research interest also focuses on the material and spatial histories of South Asia. In recent years, her research projects have been supported by the Humanities Research Institute (HRI), Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation (OVCRI), Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC), American Institute of Bangladesh Studies (AIBS), the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), and the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS).
Research Interest
Human-centered design; Social design; Diasporic landscape; Feminist place-making; Domestic place-making; Vernacular art and architecture; South Asian material culture and architectural history.
Additional Campus Affiliations
Assistant Professor, School of Architecture (0% appointment)
Assistant Professor, Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (CSAMES)
Assistant Professor, Center for the Study of Global Gender Equity (CSGGE)
Assistant Professor, Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies (HGMS)
Education
Ph.D. in Architecture, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), Milwaukee, USA.
M.S. in Architecture and Urban Design, Columbia University, New York, USA.
B.ARCH (Bachelor of Architecture), Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Research and publications
Ongoing and upcoming research
Collage image from the book project “Shifting Dwellings: Place, Culture, and Identity of Bangladeshi Immigrant Women in New York, USA, 2000-Present.”
Exhibition image from “The Mediation Slice: Exploring Immigrant Placemaking in Chicago’s Devon Avenue,” 2023 Time-Space-Existence Exhibition in Venice, Italy; organized by ECC-Italy and Venice Biennial.
Selected publications
Mapping Spatial Behaviors and Narratives of Women Experiencing the COVID-19 Pandemic: From an Architecture School in the Midwest USA. In the book COVID-19 and a World of Ad Hoc Geographies, eds. Stanley D. Brunn and Donna Gilbreath, Springer Publications. ISBN: 978-3-030-94349-3.
River as Lived Place in South Asian Urbanism: A Study of Buriganga Riverbank, Dhaka. (co-author Rahman M.). In the book, A Handbook of Waterfront Development and Urbanism, ed. Mohammed Mahbubur Rahman, Ph.D., Routledge Publications. ISBN: 9781032067513.
The Mediation Slice: Exploring Immigrant Placemaking in Chicago’s Devon Avenue. (co-author: Negin Moayer). In the exhibition catalogue Time Space Existence 2023.
Bangladeshi Immigrant Women’s Memories from Past-Lived Homes: Their Ways of Knowing Spaces. In the book, Next50: Collective Futures— Critical-creative Perspectives on the Built Environment in Bangladesh, a joint book project by ContextBD and Open Studio, University Press Limited (UPL) Bangladesh. https://www.next50bangladesh.com/
(Upcoming) Rohingya Refugees in a Segregated Geography: Case Study Milwaukee, The United States. In the book, Rohingya Refugees: Identity, Citizenship, and Human Rights, ed. Dr. Sajaudeen Chaparban, Routledge Publications.
Teaching and advising
Classes taught
ARTF 105: Art Foundation (3D)
ARTD 101: Introduction to Industrial Design
ARTD 201: Industrial Design I
ARTD 202: Industrial Design II
ARTD 225: Design Drawing
ARTD 328: Human-centered Product Design
ARTD 501: Industrial Design I From Inquiry to Ideation