Yelena McLane

Yelena McLane, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the School of Design at Florida State University. She is a researcher, educator, and practitioner whose work explores the relationships between interior spatial configurations and human experience across educational, cultural, and residential environments.

Dr. McLane’s research employs a mixed methods approach that integrates quantitative spatial analysis with qualitative inquiry to examine how interior environments influence perception, behavior, identity, and well being. A central focus of her current scholarship is housing insecurity and trauma informed design. She is a co author of the IDEC-winning book Designing for Homelessness, which investigates how architectural and interior design strategies in shelters and supportive housing shape dignity, recovery, and self identity. She also serves as the program lead for Design Resources for Homelessness, a nonprofit initiative dedicated to advancing research based and socially responsible housing design.

In parallel, Dr. McLane maintains an active research agenda in design history, with work ranging from spatial analysis of historic interiors to twentieth century Soviet modernism. Her publications include studies of cinematic representations of modernism, the design of cultural goods in the USSR, and examination of domesticity and family life in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie houses. Drawing on more than fifteen years of professional experience in museum and exhibition design, she teaches graduate and undergraduate studios, theory, and research methods courses, and mentors students in scholarly and design inquiry.