Christopher Marcinkoski, an Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design has been awarded a Rome Prize fellowship.

Marcinkoski is among 29 winners of the 2015-16 Rome Prize Fellowship.

The prestigious fellowship offers an opportunity for prize winners to pursue their work in an atmosphere conducive to intellectual and artistic freedom, interdisciplinary exchange, and innovation. The prize includes a stipend, a study or studio, and room and board for a period of six months to two years in Rome, Italy. Marcinkoski’s proposal, titled “Rome, Empire Building and The City That Never Was,” was awarded the Rolland Rome Prize in the category of Landscape Architecture.

“I am very honored to join the ranks of these scholars and have the opportunity to continue ongoing research related to the increasing proliferation of foreign-motivated speculative urbanization activities on the African continent, reflecting on them as a kind of soft empire building,” Marcinkoski said.

Marcinkoski shares this honor with PennDesign faculty members Randall Mason and Karen M'Closkey who won the Prize in 2012-2013. He will depart for Rome to begin the fellowship in January 2016.

For more information about the American Academy in Rome and Rome Prize, visit www.aarome.org.