Pari Riahi (center), associate professor of architecture and associate dean for research and engagement, stands with Barbara Klinkhammer (left), ARCC president and dean of the Thomas Jefferson University College of Architecture & the Built Environment, and Ihab Elzeyadi, ARCC vice president/president-elect and University of Oregon professor of architecture & building science, at the ARCC-EAAE International Conference in Atlanta on April 10.

Honors and Awards

Pari Riahi Receives National ARCC Mid-Career Research Award

Pari Riahi, associate professor of architecture and associate dean for research and engagement in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts (HFA), has been named the 2025-26 recipient of the Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC) Mid-Career Research Impact Award.

The award, given annually to one mid-career faculty for outstanding research performance and substantive contributions to the field of architecture, was presented to Riahi at the 2026 ARCC-EAAE (European Association for Architectural Education) International Conference in Atlanta on April 10. Recipients of the award are selected by the ARCC Board of Directors through a highly competitive review process.

“Riahi’s selection for the ARCC Mid-Career Research Impact Award is a testament to the exceptional quality and reach of her scholarship,” HFA Dean Lupe Davidson said. “This recognition reflects the caliber of faculty research that defines the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, and we are proud to see her contributions celebrated at the national level.”

Riahi joined UMass Amherst in 2016 from the Rhode Island School of Design. She received tenure in the Department of Architecture in 2022, and her research spans the history and theory of architecture, drawing and representation, and the study of urban form and affordable housing.

Riahi received the College Outstanding Teaching Award in 2021 and a Lilly Fellowship in 2020-21, and was named a Spotlight Scholar in 2025. She is currently member of the Board of Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians and an international editor of the Journal of Architecture.

She is the author of “Ars et Ingenium: Embodied Imagination in Francesco di Giorgio’s Drawings” (Routledge, 2015) and has two books currently under development, “Architectures of Collectivity” and “Disjointed Continuity.”

Riahi is also instigator and co-editor, with Laure Katsaros and Michael T. Davis, of a series of edited volumes published by UMass Amherst Press, “Exactitude: of Precision and Play in Contemporary Architecture” (2022) and “Multiplicity: of Constraint and Agency in Contemporary Architecture” (2024). A third and last volume, “Quickness: of Rhythms of Time in Contemporary Architecture” is currently in development.

Among other publications, Riahi’s work has appeared in the Journal of Architecture, the Journal of Architectural Education. She has also served on the Advisory Committee of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.