Emily Kahn is New York City-based historic preservationist, public historian, and first-year doctoral student in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture at the Bard Graduate Center. She specializes in late modern and contemporary Jewish material culture and architectural reuse.

Kahn holds a master’s degree in Historic Preservation from Columbia University GSAPP, where she completed an archival and oral history-based thesis that explored re-envisioning Holocaust commemoration in celebration of survivors and refugees through the case study of Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. She also received a bachelor’s degree in History (high honors, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) with a minor in Museum Studies from Colgate University and attended the University of Florida’s Preservation Institute of Nantucket.

Prior to joining the Bard Graduate Center, Kahn spent five years in the preservation nonprofit sector, working at the National Trust for Historic Preservation on the National Fund for Sacred Places and serving as the Executive Director of the New York Preservation Archive Project. She is also an adjunct professor at the New York School of Interior Design and a licensed NYC Sightseeing Guide.