Roemer van Toorn is professor architecture theory and director of doctoral studies at the UMA School of Architecture. Besides doing research and education he lectures, writes about contemporary architecture, and is a freelance photographer.
Van Toorn teaches Architecture theory and history in the Ba and Ma program, is one of the examiners of the Masters program at the UMA School of Architecture, and was this year appointed director of doctoral studies now that the PhD Research School has restarted in October 2024 with four new PhD students. And he has been in charge of the UMA Talks from 2023 to 2024, a newly initiated public lecture series at the UMA School of Architecture.
In the past he was head of the history and theory program and of publications of the Berlage Institute, Postgraduate Laboratory of Architecture, Amsterdam, and co-founded the Berlage Institute PhD research school with the Delft School of Design (DSD) at the TU Delft, The Netherlands. Van Toorn taught at the Universität der Künste Berlin, St Lucas Brussels, and Ghent. Together with rector Peter Kjaer, and professors Thomas Oloffson, Per Nilsson, Oren Lieberman, and Jüri Soolep he co-initiated and did run together with the scientific committee the PhD Research school at the newly established school of architecture at Umeå University with PhD students Sepedih Karami, Hannes Frykholm, Katja Hogenboom and Janek Ozmin. Furthermore he initiated and did run, among other programs, the public lecture series and roundtable conversations at UMA entitled "Relational Architecture," "Making Architecture Politically," and "Staging the Message." Together with the Swedish Research School in Architecture (ResArc) he organized the PhD Communication course for PhD students in Sweden "Staging the Message. The Architecture of Communication."