Devin Jernigan

Devin Jernigan is a doctoral candidate in Architectural History and Theory, where his dissertation, Spectacular Nomadism, examines how space was transformed by the traveling circus during America’s modernization. His research treats the circus as an itinerant spatial system, investigating the relationships among mobility, public space, infrastructure, spectacle, and territorial change. Through archival research, digital mapping, and material reconstruction, Jernigan examines how temporary environments generate alternative forms of spatial knowledge and expand understandings of architecture, landscape, and urbanism.

Jernigan’s scholarship focuses on overlooked spatial practices and how collective movement, performance, and temporary occupation shape the built environment. His digital mapping of circus routes across the American landscape earned the 2026 Student of the Year Award from Yale’s Esri Innovation Program. His research has been supported by the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS)/Society of Architectural Historians Sally Kress Tompkins Fellowship for his architectural and historical report on The Ringling Museum of Art’s Ca’ d’Zan, and by the 2024 HABS Charles E. Peterson Prize for his documentation of the Circus World Museum’s circa-1890 Parsons Family Concessions Tent. In 2023, he reconstructed and exhibited a canvas concessions tent at the Yale University School of Architecture North Gallery, integrating historical inquiry, architectural representation, and fabrication.

Alongside his research, Jernigan is committed to architectural education and interdisciplinary design practice. He has served as a Teaching Fellow at Yale University and has taught design studios at Montana State University, the China Academy of Art, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in LA+, LOG, Park Books, Bandwagon, Paprika!, and in Routledge publications on mapping and improvised urbanism. He has presented his research at the American Historical Association, the Circus Historical Society Conference, and the Rice University SoA’s Dissertation Colloquium.

Before Yale, Jernigan practiced architecture and landscape-oriented design for more than a decade, including four years as a digital design consultant at The Olin Studio. He has worked with RUR Architecture, New–Territories/R&Sie…, Cox, Graae and Spack Architects, and LYCS Architecture, which he co-founded. He was a 2017–2018 Architecture Artist-in-Residence at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, where he exhibited The Rat House, a full-scale mock-up of a speculative architectural machine. His work has also been shown at Projektraum Römerstraße in Stuttgart and at the Front Gallery at Montana State University. He holds a Master of Architecture from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture with Honors from the University of Cincinnati.

Research Area Keywords

early American popular culture, nomadic performance groups, festive monuments, crafting techniques, portable lightweight structures