Prof Dr Lesley Lokko OBE
Professor Lesley Lokko OBE is a Ghanaian-Scottish architect, educator and best-selling novelist. She is the Founder and Director of the African Futures Institute (AFI) in Accra, Ghana, an independent postgraduate school of architecture and public events platform. In December 2021, she was appointed Curator of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition,
La Biennale di Venezia. In December 2022, she was awarded an OBE in the first New Year’s Honours List by King Charles III, for services to architecture and education. As a novelist, she has published 13 bestsellers, starting with Sundowners (Orion, 2004), which have been translated into 15 languages.
She is the recipient of the 2020 RIBA Annie Spink Award and is a Visiting Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and a Visiting Full Professor at the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy, University College Dublin. She is a Trustee of London-based Architecture Foundation and is currently a Founding Member of the Council on Urban Initiatives, co-founded by LSE Cities, UN-Habitat and UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.
She was the Founder and Director of the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg (2014–2019) and the Dean of Architecture at The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture (2019–2020), The City College of New York (CCNY).
She is the Editor of White Papers, Black Marks: Race, Culture, Architecture (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), the Editor-in-Chief of FOLIO: Journal of Contemporary African Architecture, and UCL Press Series Guest Editor of Design Research in Architecture.
