Our People

Dr Sydney Ayers Mercer

Member of Common Room

Tutor in Architecture & Urbanism, The King's Foundation

PhD, MScR (Edinburgh); BA (Dartmouth); AFHEA

Sydney is Tutor in Architecture & Urbanism at The King’s Foundation, where she teaches across academic programmes and university partnerships. She also works on special projects related to furniture history, traditional building and crafts, and heritage skills training. Sydney acts as Book Reviews Editor for the Journal of Urbanism.

As an historian of architecture and design from 1750, Sydney’s research explores how architecture (in the broadest sense) shapes and is shaped by societies, taste and cultural memory over time. She considers how the past informs and engages with the present and future, in a variety of methods and contexts.

Sydney’s research centres on the afterlife and reception of British (neo)classical architecture and design in Britain as well as globally, from the long eighteenth to the present day—with a particular focus on the work and legacy of architect Robert Adam.
She also works within sustainable architecture and urbanism, looking at how existing and heritage buildings address contemporary challenges related to city building and urban development. Sydney has a particular interest in urban and design history relating to city expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Prior to joining The King’s Foundation, Sydney was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for the Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh. She completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh, funded by a PhD Scholarship from the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB). Sydney completed an MScR at the University of Edinburgh, and also holds a BA from Dartmouth College.