Architecture Professor Jess Myers Awarded Prestigious Rome Prize
Jess Myers, an assistant professor in the School of Architecture, has been selected to receive the 2026–27  by the American Academy in Rome.
For more than 130 years, the academy has awarded the Rome Prize fellowship through a national competition that supports innovative work in 13 disciplines across the arts and humanities. This year, Myers was one of 31 artists and scholars to receive this highest standard of excellence.
Myers—an urbanist whose practice includes work as an editor, writer, podcaster and curator—was awarded the prize for her project, “OverPast: Disruptive Listening in Urban Pasts and Presents,” a comparative urban transmission arts project that explores acts of overpass removal in Syracuse, New York, and Rome, Italy.
The project frames overpasses (also called overbridges or flyovers) as spaces in which the promises of past urban transformation collide with contemporary calls for reparations and real estate driven visions of more than just cities. It compares the removal process of the Syracuse I-81 viaduct with the removal and redevelopment ambitions around Rome’s Tangenziale Est. The project experiments with guerrilla shortwave radio transmissions featuring audio collages of overpass field recordings, found sound, archival radio and interviews.
“This methodology is a materialization of my interests and research in sound, urban mundanity and ruptures with definitive storytelling,” says Myers.
The Rome Prize provides artists and scholars with dedicated time, space and a transdisciplinary community in which to advance their work within the city of Rome. Beginning in September, the fellows will reside and work at the academy’s 11-acre campus on the Janiculum Hill for periods ranging from five to 10 months.
Throughout the 2026–27 fellowship year, Rome Prize winners will be joined by a group of invited residents—accomplished artists and scholars who come to the academy for residencies of one to three months. In this shared environment, fellows and residents engage in ongoing exchange, participate in public programs and generate collaborations in Rome and throughout Italy, analyzing the relationships between past, present and future, fostering dialogue across disciplines and supporting new approaches to creative and scholarly work.
“Coming from a wide range of disciplines and practices, the 2026–27 cohort is united by their commitment to intellectual generosity and to cross-disciplinary engagement,” Peter N. Miller, president and CEO of the American Academy in Rome, said in a press release. “The Rome Prize is a bedrock of the Academy’s mission to support the most compelling minds in the arts and humanities from across the United States. We look forward to welcoming this cohort and to the questions, ideas and discoveries that will shape their time in the Eternal City.”
Rome Prize winners are selected annually by independent juries composed of distinguished artists and scholars. This year’s competition drew 958 applicants from across the United States and U.S. citizens living abroad, with an acceptance rate of 3.03%.
“I’m so shocked and excited to win the Rome Prize,” says Myers. “I’m really looking forward to the time and space to work on my research and experiment with radio.”
The American Academy in Rome honored the 2026-27 Rome Prize winners on April 22 during the . A complete list of winners can be found at .
