Frederik Braüner is an architect and historian of modern and contemporary architecture in the Arctic and wider Circumpolar North. He holds a PhD in Architecture with a Designated Emphasis in European and Scandinavian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley; an MA in Political Architecture from the Royal Danish Academy; and a BA in Art History from the University of Copenhagen. Braüner is the 2026–2028 Buell Center Teaching and Research Fellow.

His research focuses on the overlapping histories of colonialism, welfare ideologies, and high-modernist spatial practices, particularly in the Arctic. His current book project, “Building a Modern High North: The Colonial and Transnational Construction of Modernity in the Arctic,” examines the transnational collaborations among the imperial powers active in the Arctic during the twentieth century. For decades, Scandinavian and North American states instrumentalized modern architecture and urbanism to impose new systems of governance in the region, recasting colonial ties and cultural relations. Theories of modern planning flowed across political, geographical, and national borders, greatly influencing the lives of Indigenous communities in Sápmi, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Nunavut, and Alaska. This project expands on his doctoral research, which examined the intersections of colonial domination and welfare-state expansion in the Danish postwar modernization of Greenland. This research was supported by the Society of Architectural Historians, the Augustinus Foundation, and the Institute of International Studies and Global, International, and Area Studies at UC Berkeley. Braüner previously worked as an architect and editor in Denmark, and his writing has appeared in academic and popular journals such as Architecture and Culture, Magasin for Bygningskunst og Kultur, Arkitekten, and Information.