Rana Abudayyeh is an associate professor of interior architecture and holds the Robin Klehr Avia Professorship at the UT College of Architecture and Design. A registered architect in her native country of Jordan, she is an educator and researcher whose work examines interiority as a critical site of lived experience, with particular attention to displacement, conflict, and social precarity. Approaching the built environment from the inside out, Abudayyeh’s scholarship foregrounds improvised, vernacular, and often erased spatial practices, positioning design as a framework for placemaking, cultural continuity, and societal transformation. Her research operates at the intersection of spatial justice, representation, digital making, and emerging AI-mediated technologies, with sustained attention to ethical design knowledge and decision-making. Refugee camps and contested urban sites figure prominently in her work, where interiors are understood as active agents in survival, memory, and collective life. Her scholarship has appeared in Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture, Journal of Interior Design, MONU, IDEA Journal, and the Journal of Interventions and Adaptive Reuse, as well as in edited volumes including Upkeep: Repair and Maintenance in Adaptive Interiors, Public Interiority, Informality and the City, and Speculative Coolness. She is currently working on The Routledge Companion to Human-Centered Interior Design, anticipated in 2027. Abudayyeh is the recipient of the IIDA Educator Diversity Award and the IDEC Teaching Excellence Award. Her teaching spans foundational to advanced studios, emphasizing ethical speculation, critical pedagogy, and socially engaged design practice. Prior to joining UT Knoxville, she taught architecture at the University of New Mexico and practiced with Antoine Predock Architect on nationally and internationally recognized civic and cultural projects.

Education 

Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, University of New Mexico
Master of Architecture with Distinction, University of New Mexico 

Expertise and Interests 

• Interiority and lived space
• Spatial Justice
• Displacement and refugee design
• Adaptive interiors
• Digital and AI-mediated design practices
• Human-centered and socially engaged design
• Critical design pedagogy