"The first graduate program at RISD was established in 1957 with the MS in Art Education with the first MFA programs starting in 1961. We now have 16 graduate programs with 2 more being added in 2018.The core of any graduate program is concentrated and advanced study in an academic or professional field. Compared with undergraduate studies, graduate education is focused on producing original contributions to a field, based on research and advance practice. Graduate programs also provide the opportunity for more applied experience via internships, teaching or research. This is essential for RISD’s commitment to furthering the importance of art and design in the world and in producing distinguished professional and academic leaders." -Pradeep Sharma, RISD Provost 2014-2017
This series presents all collected student Masters Theses submitted and approved as graduation requirements from each of the seventeen departments offering a graduate degree: Architecture, Ceramics, Digital + Media, Furniture Design, Glass, Graphic Design, Illustration, Industrial Design, Interior Architecture, Jewelry + Metalsmithing, Landscape Architecture, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, Teaching + Learning in Art and Design, and Textiles. Postgraduate writing and research is also included.
These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Theses from 2026
Held In Sediment, Kati Lowe
Post Desire, Lucy E. Luckovich
Kicau Kericau: The Chirps and Warbles of a Bird-Human Story, Airien Ludin
Body In Process: Assembly, Control and the Medical Gaze, Fangzhou Lu
Human After All, Ritu Mantri
Draw to Breathe, Ranran Ma
The Porous Auto Body, Banshee Maria
care ecologies between knots, Eliza R. Marris
The Frame You're Holding, Andrea Mato
In Common: A Housing Exploration in Roxbury, Massachusetts, Brooke McLaughlin
Fictional Truths, Saachi Mehta
Finding a Way Out of the Filter Bubble: The Confusion of a Heavy Social Media User, Longwen Miao
The Root Over My Eyes, Shiyeon Monk
The Found Stone Game, Magnolia Moskun
Productive Armature, Gabriel Ofem Peter
Sous-Bois, Spencer G. Peterson
Critical Connections: An evaluation and envisioning of partnership between art museums, schools, & central offices, Bennett R. Portillo
Chronos | Kairos: Exploring Time Through Experimental Comics and Artist’s Books, Rhea Pradeep
My Utopian Dream, Pingfan Que
Billiards Cosmographies, Camilla Radoyce and Camilla Radoyce
numb., Anna Rapson
Finding The Magic: On Kenning and Mediation, Anna L. Rasmussen
Gray Sheep, Jennifer Richie
Touching Ground: Embodied Methods of Design, Mary A. Ritchie
Between Seeing and Knowing, Pavol Roskovensky
Writing from the Rift: Queer Temporality and the Refusal of Resolution, Daniela Ruiz Perez
Crowd Control, Dalia Sadeq
Jadughar: The House of Magic, Dhruvi A. Shah
A Body Stitched in Traces, Youyun Shang
2'x2' : Situating Cohabitation, Liz B. Shepherd
What Teachers See: Collaborative Artmaking in Chinese and U.S. Elementary Schools, Jiayu Shi
Household Hegemon: Domestic and Affective Traces of US Influence in Mexico in the 1950s and 1990s, Edgar Solórzano
Ark-ipelago: Or, The Voluntary Prisoners of Archaeology, Michel Song
The Home and the Self: On Perceptions of Feminine Virtue, Rebecca Stevens
Looking in All Directions, Abby Sunde
Margin:Finding Coexistence within the Marginalized Habitats of Cities, Zihan Sun
چھپن چھپائی (Chupan chupai), Muhammad Talha Mr
Where the Walls Came Down: Reimagining the Disaster-Induced Modern Ruin, Zhenmi Tang
Learning from the Remains: Meditations on Sustainability, Julae Tan
Sites of Departure, Kevin Tomas
1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, ..., AnneMarie Torresen
Our Own, My Own: Expereinces with Art, Kaleisha Towle
An Anxious Artist's Guide to Magic, Mot Tuman
Breathing Structures: Hygroscopicity of fibers., Nawal Urooj
My Mother the Mountain, Ricky Vasan
Made in Chimerica, Austin Wang
Domestic Travelers: Transparent Machines, Hollow Bodies, Hanyi Wang
Where Each Step Lands: Reconnecting and Reparenting Through Visual Narrative, Skye Wang
A Thesis by an Art Student Trying to Find Meaning in Simulation Games, Yichuan Wang
Material Costs, Karima Weinman
For Now, Eriq Wities
KEV's Dinghy Boat Workshops, Ruiyang Xiao
The Right to Withdraw: Soft Boundaries and Material Refuge in the Workplace, Zhihao (Sky) Xing
In Transit, ziqi xu
Forgotten Threads: The Embodiment of Time and Memory in Jewelry., Alees Yang
FEELING THROUGH SPACE:Designing Emotion in Space Through Alice in Wonderland, Xuanyu Yang
Collecting Meaning: A Study on Collecting as an Artmaking Practice, Johanna Young
A Pot of Gold at the End of the Assembly Line: Jewelry, Facture, and Alienation, Jonathon A. Zalakos
Cartooning from Life: A Graphic Guide to Using Non-Fiction Comics in Education, Maxwell Zawatsky
The Birdwatching Pause: Reframing Campus Life Through Everyday Bird Encounters, Katherine Zeng
SOFT BODIES, HARD FRAMES, Emily Zhang
Re-Assembly, Tonia Zhang
The body has its own time, wen zhang
Within the Archive: Jewelry and the Poetics of Historical Trace, Fusheng Zhong
Situational 情境中, Jo Zixuan
Theses from 2025
Pulped Landscapes, Allison P. Abrams
Silent Witnesses: Reconnecting Landscape through Lost Narratives, Abeer Aljohani
Al-Naseej: A Woven Path, Dalal M. Almazeedi
Exploring Al Balad, danah alqunfuzi
Post Occupation Amnesia, Zainah AlWuhaib
The Dialectic of Airless Space, ophelia arc
Between Sleeps, Cassidy S. Argo
'manch' beyond - museum, Dhwani Bapna
The Navel Of The Dream, Ella C. Baum
Learning What Makes Craft Schools Successful, Christopher J. Beaudoin and Christopher James Beaudoin
Post Salt: Adaptive Architecture for an Uncertain Climate, Mallorie Beckner
An Axe to the Funny Bone: Curated Instability and Horror-Comedy Intersections in American Storytelling, Samantha Box
Notes From A Twentysomething Educator: Liberation in the Art Classroom and Beyond, Julia R. Braffett
No One Thing, Kate Brown
this is how to shoot a gun., Rene Camarillo
Daily Creative Practice: A Path to Well-Being for Self + Society, Ellie Cashman
MFA Confidential, Julius Cavira and Julius Cavira
Living Heritage, Aysenur Cetin
Poetic Pragmatism, Nino N. Chambers
Lingering Loading, Chi Hao Chang
SPACE, LIFE AND CAPITAL: THE METABOLIC RIFT, Zhongsu Cheng
To Stain the Soul, ShaoQing Chen
Re-imagining As Re-empowering, Zheyun Chen
Soft Potential, Jennifer Choi
Site-Specific Nurseries: Reconnecting Nurseries to Time and Place Through Ecotypic Bare-Root Production, Tryn Collins
Towards the Non-Spectacle: Responses to Necropolitics in the artwork of Teresa Margolles and Maya Watanabe, Leslie Anne Condon
Parallel Worlds, Mary J. Connell
Soft Stickers, Alexandra L. Croft
Wood in Hand: Open-Ended Wooden Play, Farnaz Dastranj
Unseen, But There, XINYU DONG
WOOORRMMHOOOLLEESS, Kimberly Duck
How To Walk On Water: Living Through The Absurd, Esther Du
Built for Belonging: An Exploration of the Mutual Adoption Between Human and Home, Jillian Edwards
Till Tender, Karli R. Ehl