Jassen Callender is a professor of architecture and director of Mississippi State University’s Jackson Center which houses the Jackson Community Design Center and the School of Architecture’s 5th year program where he teaches design studios and Philosophy of Architecture. He is a licensed architect, painter, writer, and member of the Society of Architectural Historians. Callender’s educational background includes undergraduate training in both architecture and philosophy (1987-1994) as well as graduate work in painting, sculpture, and art history leading to an MFA in 2001. His subsequent research ranges from analyses of the role of perception in sustainable urbanism to the impact of shifts from meaning to information paradigms on the evolution of architecture theory and practice. All of this work aims at deepening our understanding of how meaning is constructed and shared through the built environment. He has published two books, Architecture History and Theory in Reverse and Building Cities to LAST, with Routledge in 2017 and 2021 respectively.