Elisa Kim leads the architecture curriculum at both introductory and advanced levels. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in energy and environmental policy from Boston University and a master of architecture from Washington University in St. Louis.

Kim's research combines methodologies from environmental policy with architectural drawing and representation to engage a wide set of concerns about the environment, borders and boundaries. Her current oceanic mappings question the agency of the line and the illusion of the fixity of the map as an outlined artifact delineating cultural, political and social bodies from one another. In particular, her work studies the fluid spatiality of the sea through drawings of new and uncharted, yet already contested, territories of the ocean floor and their associated events and populations, inviting a re-reading of oceanic space not merely as industrial or extra-geographic border zones, but as the grounds for global migration, public encounter, shared inhabitation and cultural exchange.

Previously, Kim taught architecture studios at Washington University in St. Louis and practiced architecture in the offices of Plasma Studio (London), Axi;Ome (St. Louis) and Schulze+Grassov (Copenhagen and St. Louis).