Ralph Ghoche

Ralph Ghoche is a historian of 19th-century architecture and urbanism. His current research examines how the Catholic Church reshaped urban space in colonial Algiers to revive Augustinian Christendom, a topic explored in his essay “Erasing the Ketchaoua Mosque” in Neocolonialism and Built Heritage. He has also written widely on French architecture’s relationship to ornament, archaeology, and aesthetics, with a forthcoming book from McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Ghoche’s work has appeared in Architectural Histories, Harvard Design Magazine, The Journal of Architectural Education, and others. His research has been supported by CASVA, the Whiting Foundation, the CCA, the Getty, and Columbia’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

He has taught at RPI, Pratt, and Vassar, and currently teaches at Barnard College on topics including landscape theory, utopian urbanism, diasporas, surveillance, and modern architecture. He holds architecture degrees from McGill and a PhD from Columbia.

In Paris, Ghoche will research and write a chapter for his book Christians in the Casbah: Reassessing the Catholic Church’s Role in Algeria, focusing on the 1853 discovery and forensic study of Geronimo, a 16th-century Muslim convert martyred in French Algeria. His project explores how this case bolstered Catholic missionary efforts under colonial rule and reveals little-known conversion practices through rarely accessed archival documents.