Biography

Vimalin Rujivacharakul, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Art and Architectural History at the University of Delaware (United States). She also serves as the 2024–2027 Visiting Professor at the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University (China), and is a Lifetime Fellow of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge (United Kingdom).

Her research examines the intellectual and material histories of objects, the history of cartography, and the global history of collecting. She is the author and editor of several acclaimed works, including Architecturalized Asia (a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title), Liang Sicheng and the Temple of Buddha’s Light (China Classic Series, Ministry of Education, China), and Collecting China: The World, China, and A Short History of Collecting. Her current projects include studies on global architectural history between the two world wars and on the intersections of artifacts and architecture. She also serves, with Murray Fraser (The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London), as co-editor of the forthcoming six-volume series, A Cultural History of Architecture.

Her work has been supported by the Institute for Advanced Study, Getty Research Institute, Social Science Research Council (SSRC), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Graham Foundation, Chang Ching-kuo Foundation, Needham Research Institute, Mellon Foundation, Paul Mellon Centre and Terra Foundation for American Art.

Rujivacharakul has an established record of leading interdisciplinary collaborative projects. From 2021 to 2025, she directed the interdisciplinary cross-campus Old College Project, uniting scholars, staff and students from 23 units, with support from the University Facilities, to study the University of Delaware’s oldest building and founding architectural site. The project produced "Colors of Old College," a two-gallery exhibition with the University Museums, the Winterthur Center for Conservation and the Department of Art Conservation; "Colors, Land, and Building: Old College and Delaware," the MFA student exhibition with the Department of Art and Design; a digital walking tour of the Old College Historical District with the Center for Historic Architecture and Design and the Department of Landscape Architecture; and three-hour collaborative performances designed and performed by students and faculty members of the School of Music and the Department of Theatre and Dance. The project’s logistics were supported by the Alumni and Development Office, the University Library, the Office of Communications and Marketing, the Center for Teaching and Assessment of Learning and University Facilities.

From 2019 to 2022, Rujivacharakul taught four seminars on Art History and Critical Cartography studying early modern cartography (16th–18th centuries), which resulted in the digital exhibition Multiple Middles, curated by students in the final seminar, and a public in-person exhibition (with students’ essays to accompany the exhibition) at the University of Delaware’s Special Collections in 2022. 

In 2017, she co-led, with Catharine Dann Roeber and Robert Mintz, the international workshop Chinese Objects Outside of China at the Winterthur Museum, developed with the support of the National Museum of Asian Art’s Chinese Object Study Initiative

At Tsinghua University, she collaborates on research in vernacular architecture and is co-editing an anthology on vernacular architecture and Orientalism. Together with colleagues, she is also launching a new project exploring connections between local communities and heritage revitalization.

At the University of Delaware, Dr. Rujivacharakul supervises doctoral students in Art History and Art Conservation. She is grateful to everyone who support her advisees who have received the Wilbur Owen Sypherd Prize for Distinguished Dissertation in the Humanities, and fellowships, and internships from the Metropolitan Museum, the Palace Museum in Beijing, Chung Yong Yang Embroidery Museum, Textile Museum in Washington DC., Qing Historical Research Institute in Beijing, the Getty Conservation Institute, and other institutions.

Institutional Collaborative Projects

• ​Between Monumental and Vernacular Architecture. Co-directing with Dr. Luo Deyin, an international collab​orative project on architecture and preservation in China, 2015 to present. Funded in part by Ministry of Education, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and Tsinghua University, China.

• The Global Impact of Asian Aesthetics on American Art and Material Culture. Co-directing with Professor J. Ritchie Garrison, an inter-institutional collaborative project on aesthetics and art. Funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.​