Samia Henni

Samia Henni is a historian of the built, destroyed and imagined environments. Samia’s research and teaching address questions of colonization, wars, extraction, deserts, forced displacement, and gender. She is the author of the multi-award-winning “Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria”, in which she examined French colonial territorial transformations and spatial counterinsurgency measures in Algeria under colonial rule, especially during the Algerian Revolution (1954-1962). She is also the author of “Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara”, investigating France's nuclear weapons program conducted between 1960 and 1966 in the Algerian desert.

Samia is also the maker of exhibitions, such as “Performing Colonial Toxicity” (Framer Framed, If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam, 2023–04), “Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria” (Zurich, Rotterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Paris, Prague, Ithaca, Philadelphia, Charlottesville, 2017–22), “Archives: Secret-Défense?” (ifa Gallery, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2021), and “Housing Pharmacology” (Manifesta 13, Marseille, 2020). Currently, she is a Visiting Professor at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zurich.