"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 2025
Notes From A Twentysomething Educator: Liberation in the Art Classroom and Beyond, Julia R. Braffett
MFA Confidential, Julius Cavira and Julius Cavira
Towards the Non-Spectacle: Responses to Necropolitics in the artwork of Teresa Margolles and Maya Watanabe, Leslie Anne Condon
Building Ecologies: Maintaining Land, Working with Wood, Taylor Jais
Untitled, Seung Ho Jeon
Playing With Ideas: A Museum-Based Inquiry, Claire Meagher
Fire Fossils: Biomineral Infrastructures in Untangling Climates, Tanmayee More
The Ruminating Shell : A Reparative Experiment in Dialogic Writing and Sensory Resonance, Crystal Jiayin Ren
Material Values Black Locust Exploration, Benjamin N. Riley
Chasing The Sacred: A Personal Archive, Yiko Yang
Coarse Woody Debris: Growth & Decay, Cody W. Young
The Stream of Life, Yitao Yuan
Theses from 2024
CODEX OCCULTUS, Aya Abdallah
Dimensional Dialogues, Farida Abousteit
ASILI, Husna Abubakar
Unfurling Blue Carpet Memories, Sara Ahli
Detroit Jazz Geographies: Marronage and Speculative Urban Futures, Denzel Amoah
Folding (and Unfolding): A Site-Responsive Strategy for Reusing Construction and Demolition Waste, Jennifer Ansley
DEFINING SELF IN THE URBAN FRONTIER, YIMENG AN
The Future Is Over, Dotan Appelbaum
I am becoming., Dai Asano
Half Dawn, Catherine Ashley
Reform Craft | Re-Form Clay, Katherine Badenhausen
Narrative Structures, Theodore Badenhausen
Tethered by Nourishment - Exploring Sovereignty within an Urban Food Apartheid, Benjamin Bailey
Sircling the Cquare, Latika Balachander
Modern Times, Will Beattie
Graphic Desire, Michelle Belgrod
Garment Making as a Practice of Freedom, Emily Bennison
New Craft: Craft Practices in the Digital Era, Paulina Bereza
Landing: body, site, material, Renata Berta
JUGAATRONICS, Monica Bhyrappa
Umbrella and Jellyfish, yanran bi
Room to Grieve: The Space of Solace in Public Life, Lauren Blonde
Never Real Historians, Emily Bluedorn
Frontier: Land, Architecture, and Abstraction, Jacob Boatman
Always Been This Way, Joanna Booth
Intangible shells, Elena Bulet
Trans-species Communication, Fueled by Efforts of Remediation, Naomi Canino
Winter Solstice, Jingwen Cao
Revitalizing Decay, Owen Carey
Rhythm of Space, Brian Carrillo
RECLAIMED BY ROOTS, Dongyang Chen
On the Impulse to Notate, Lydia Chodosh
Guilty Pleasure: Women's Perception of Health, Body Image, and Femininity, Irene *Yi-Han Chung
A Living Storyscape, Vivian Combariza
Searching for the Hyperobject: Crystals as Transscalar Vehicles, Jay Costello
Emotional Factory, Yukun Cui
Naturify 2300, Yarina Yiwei Dai
Discovering The Lightness of Being, Yuemeng Dai
The Importance of Art Programming for Underserved Youth, Aja Delgado
The Day the Door Flew Open, Clara Delgado
Unconditioning Air, Weijia Deng
Rejected Manuscripts, Yangqi Deng
Threading with Hair // Intertwined Stories, Cloris Ding
This Is For You: A handbook for design students, Gabriel Drozdov
Better Together, Jack Dumala
Function Follows Material, Pablo Ejarque González
(Matter)ial Revolution, Aleza Epstein
Designed Impermanence, An Alchemical Inquiry, Dani Epstein
Sweet Relief, Aaron Feltman
Call and Response : Experiments in Storytelling, Deanne Fernandes
Soft Procedures, Alec Figuracion
Building the Body, Jasmine Flowers
Beach Autonomous Zone, Carl Garvey
Industrial Tenderness, Elbert Girón
While We Were at Dinner, Anna Glass
So Far So Good, Cooper Goldman
House Calls, Gregory Goldstone
Thickness of Place: Urban Stratigraphy and Rammed Earth Construction in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Alexandra Goodenough
Culinary community: Collaborative Relationship Building through Improvisational Fine Dining, Victoria Goodisman
Textile Tectonics: Shaping Space Through Soft Studies, Lela Gunderson
Witnessing Timelessness: Revitalizing Heritage Tourism in the Ruins of Saudi Arabia, Reem Habis
Embodied Abstractions: Identity and Representation in the Digital Era, Srikar Hari
Remade Radical: Design Artifacts of a Third World Future, Yasmine Hassan
Repair Rolodex: Exchanges, Changes, and Patchwork Parables, Ethan Howard
Hong Kong’s Architectural Resistance: Practice Through Research, Jingjing Huang
Bilateral Vertical Urbanization, Yifan Huang
Furnicreature, Yijing Huang
Lost Stories, Yuxuan Huang
“Modern Nomads”: Unfolding Domesticity, Yifan Hu
Unruly and Unresolved: A Shared, Precarious Survival, Sara Inacio
Mixed Race Futurity Through Contemporary Archetypes: Mutants, Cyborgs and Dhampirs, Kobe Jackson
Re-touch, Yuxin Jin
An Abundance of Caution, Gonçalo Preto Jorge
Endless Form, Kaela Kennedy
Ornamental Archives of The Recursive Loop, prithi khalique
Stand by, I'm getting ready., Mina Kim
Going to the Sea, LINGYI KONG
Growing Together: Cultivating the Social-Emotional Effects of Art Education through Trauma-Informed Pedagogy, kaitlyn lawrence
Graphic Warmline, Soo Min Lee
Migrating with the Salt Marsh, Yiming Lei
Things I've Learned From Doing Cosplay: An Investigation On Incorporating “Atypical” Creative Practices Into Art Education, Yvonne Liang
Mind Follows Matter, Fiona Libby
Snapbot - The Enhanced Physical Play, Morong Li
City Sonatas, Duoduo Lin
Curb Appeal, Eric Liu
Navigating Transience, nina liu