Who we are

Thomas Oles is a landscape architect, professor, and author. His most recent appointment was as Head of the Design Theory Group in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. He has also held positions at Cornell University, the University of Edinburgh, Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, and the University of Oregon, and practiced as a landscape architect in New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Amsterdam. Thomas' interests lie in the word and concept landscape; the history of the landscape architecture profession; analog and digital representation of landscapes; and theories and practices of design pedagogy. He is the author of Go With Me: 50 Steps to Landscape Thinking (Architectura+Natura 2013), Walls: Enclosure and Ethics in the Modern Landscape (University of Chicago Press 2015), and Fieldwork in Landscape Architecture: Methods Actions Tools (Routledge 2024). He is currently working on a social and political history of landscape architecture. Thomas co-founded Forum on Fieldwork with Paula Horrigan in 2016.

Paula Horrigan is Professor Emerita of Landscape Architecture and Placemaking at Cornell University. She is trained in landscape architecture and the visual arts, and has maintained her own design practice for over twenty years. In 2010 Paula co-founded Rust-to Green, a community-engaged design research initiative to foster resilience and revitalization in New York’s post-industrial cities. A fellow of the Community and Regional Development Institute (CaRDI) in the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell, she has published widely on matters related to community-engaged place making, most recently Service-Learning in Design and Planning: Educating at the Boundaries (New Village Press, 2011) and Community Matters: Service-Learning and Engaged Design and Planning (Earthscan, 2014). Paula co-founded Forum on Fieldwork with Thomas Oles in 2014.

Alex Albans gained his PhD in Landscape Architecture at Birmingham City University, where he specialized in the interpretation of sites in the design process. As Research Fellow at BCU’s West Midlands National Park Lab, his research and teaching focuses on examining the impacts and implications of people’s relationships with the land.

Nick Assad is a Canadian landscape architect certified in the Ecological Land Classification system for southern Ontario. With twenty years of experience in ecological restoration, starting as a horticulturist and later as a designer, he addresses ecosystem design problems by observing underlying conditions and applying practical solutions that fit.

Roberley Bell is an artist whose work draws on the world around her, inspired by place and time. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including a Fulbright to Turkey. Her book Do You Know This Tree?, published by Visual Studies Press, documents a walk in Istanbul spanning five years. Bell creates personal walking projects and leads walking workshops internationally.

Kate Bolton Ricketson is a historical landscape architect working on cultural resource projects across the United States as part of Quinn Evans Architects’ Preservation Planning team. A believer in the power of film to capture the essence of place, she always carries her Canon A-1 into the field.

Brenda Brown is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Manitoba. Her projects range from Tzintzuntzan, Mexico to Winnipeg waterways. The editor of Landscape Fascinations and Provocations: Reading Robert B. Riley (LSU Press, 2023), she is currently engaged with multi-media fieldwork on wind and trees focusing on Manitoba’s farmstead shelterbelts and those who live with them.

Sean Burkholder is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. His work looks particularly at the agency of soils, sediments and other environmental actors in the reconsideration and design of the coastal environments of the Great Lakes region.

Christine Byl is the author of Lookout, short-listed for the Center for Fiction’s 2023 First Novel Prize, and Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods. She has been a trail-builder since 1996, and runs a trail design & construction company, Interior Trails. She lives on Dene lands in interior Alaska.

Daniel Coombes is a creative practice PhD student and landscape tutor at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington. Previously, he taught landscape architecture at universities in Korea and China. Daniel has presented his research relating to fieldwork, the more-than-human, and landscape (non)representation at interdisciplinary conferences and symposia.

Miguel Costa is an architect and artist. He is invited assistant professor at the Fine Arts Faculty University of Porto. He has been an integrated researcher at i2ADS (Research Institute in Art, Design and Society), and a collaborating researcher at CEAA (Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo). He works under the name MAARQA, Micro Atelier de Arquitectura e Arte. His practice is developed through interconnected strategies between art, landscape and architecture.

Enrica Dall’Ara is a landscape architect and principal of the Italian firm P’ARC, which emphasizes urban revitalization, public space design, and industrial landscapes rehabilitation. Currently, she is Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Planning and Landscape Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, University of Calgary, Canada.

M. Elen Deming directs the Doctor of Design program at North Carolina State University. Her work considers the reciprocity between society and its cultural landscapes. Past editor of Landscape Journal, she co-authored Landscape Architectural Research (2011), edited Values in Landscape Architecture (2015) and Landscape Observatory (2017), and co-edited Empty Pedestals: Countering Confederate Narratives through Public Design (2024).

Noémie Despland-Lichtert is an educator, designer, and independent curator. She holds a BFA from Concordia University, a Post-professional Master of Architecture from McGill University, and a Master in Curatorial Studies from the University of Southern California. She is currently an Emerging Faculty Fellow at the University of Arizona.

Lisa Diedrich is Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Malmö and currently directs the Walter Gropius Chair (DAAD) at the University of Buenos Aires. She also works as editor-in-chief of the book series Landscape Architecture Europe and as co-editor-in-chief of ’scape, the international magazine for landscape architecture and urbanism.

Arica Duhrkoop-Galas is a professional landscape architect in Eugene, Oregon. She spent fifteen years working with Stangeland & Associates before starting her own firm, Artemisia, focusing on climate resilience and responsive design. She also teaches planting design, grading and drainage, and materials and construction detailing in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon.

Yibo Fan completed two master’s degrees, in landscape architecture and anthropology, at Iowa State University in 2018. During the following year he also taught landscape architecture there. Fan is an affiliate assistant professor in the World Languages and Cultures department at Iowa State University and a member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Primate Specialist Group.

Todd Fell is a Canadian landscape architect and business owner with a passion for restoration ecology. Todd strives to implement his company’s vision to ‘realize the ecological potential of every place’ and puts that into practice using sustainable landscape design principles aimed at conserving, enhancing, and connecting people to their natural environment.

Katy Foley is a landscape architect practicing with Supernatural in Los Angeles. She has advised students at the University of Southern California, Cal Poly Pomona, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Boston Architectural College. She holds a MLA from R.I.S.D. and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Valerie Friedmann is the Greenspace Planner for the City of Lexington, Kentucky. Previously she was Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at Auburn University, where she researched the ecological and aesthetic benefits of novel plant communities. She holds a Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Tennessee.

Aroussiak Gabrielian is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism in the USC School of Architecture. She is also Director of the USC Landscape Futures Lab, an incubator for climate innovation and imagination. She is the Director of Design of foreground design agency, a critical landscape practice she co-founded with Alison Hirsch.

Kona Gray is principal at the firm EDSA, where he spearheads award-winning projects offering creative design solutions that uphold and improve the quality of life of people and places. With three decades of practice, mentorship, and advocacy across more than thirty countries, he has advanced landscape architecture’s value and role in protecting and stewarding our planet.

Etienne Haller is a landscape architect based in Paris. His approach to landscape design is guided by his interest in processes that shape landscapes and in-depth understanding of the mechanisms by which landscape transformations take place. He works in a range of project contexts and climate zones within Europe and North Africa.

Catherine Page Harris is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of New Mexico. Her built work resides at CO’G Residency in Detroit, The Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, the Marble House Project in Vermont, Deep Springs College in California, and McCovey Field in San Francisco. Her recent projects include Poured Earth Research, Variance Line, Sharing a Drink, and Trans-species Repast.

Molly Hendry is the owner and principal designer of Roots and Ramblings, a garden design studio based in Birmingham, Alabama. Her dynamic and layered planting designs draw from her training as a horticulturist and landscape architect, as well as her extensive hands-on experience in public gardens in the US and UK.

David Hill is Program Chair and Associate Professor of the Graduate Program of Landscape Architecture at Auburn University, as well as the founding principal of HILLWORKS. Prior to establishing HILLWORKS David helped unearth post-industrial landscapes as an associate and later a principal of D.I.R.T studio.

Steve Hill is a Canadian terrestrial ecologist, Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, conservation planning expert, business owner and entrepreneur. Having co-created CanPlant, a web-based native plant database, he is now busy spearheading various initiatives focused on collaborative ecological research and development addressing biological inventory and monitoring.

Alison B. Hirsch is Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Landscape Architecture and Urbanism in the USC School of Architecture. She is also founder and director of the USC Landscape Justice Initiative. She is the Director of Research of Foreground Design Agency, a critical landscape practice she co-founded with Aroussiak Gabrielian.

Cynthia Hron is an artist and landscape designer from California, now residing in Pennsylvania. She studied at Otis Art Institute and California College of the Arts, and later at Penn State where she obtained a Master of Landscape Architecture degree. Cynthia’s work encompasses social and cultural history of landscapes as a catalyst for her interdisciplinary practice.

Jon Hunt is Associate Professor at Kansas State University, where he teaches drawing, graphic design, and landscape architecture. Prior to landscape architecture he worked as a professional graphic designer, illustrator, and art director. He received a MLA from the University of Colorado Denver and a BFA from Syracuse University.

Sara Jacobs is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia. Through research and teaching grounded in environmental history, geography, and critical landscape design, Sara focuses on reinterpreting landscape through the socioecological relations that shape the politics of landscape to work toward just land futures.

Katherine Jenkins is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Knowlton School at the Ohio State University and cofounder of the design studio Present Practice. Through walking, drawing and plant growth, she directs ecological processes at the site scale. She is a recipient of the MacDowell Fellowship and the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture.

Peter Jodaitis was an artist whose intense vision was inspired by natural forms—landscape, its individual elements and the human body. He realized that vision with pencil, pen and ink, watercolor, oil, and wood. In hundreds of notebooks, he recorded with words and images his ideas, development, and process.

Paul Kelsch is the Robert L. Turner Chair in Urban Design at Virginia Tech’s Washington-Alexandria Architecture Campus. Throughout his academic career, he has taught foundation design studios at the undergraduate and graduate level, encouraging students to discover their own ways of seeing and representing the landscape they encounter.

Jason Kentner is the founder and design principal of IMPLEMENT, a landscape architecture studio based in Columbus, Ohio. Jason founded the practice as a parallel to his academic appointment as Associate Professor of Practice at Ohio State University’s Knowlton School.

Simon Kilbane is a landscape architect and urban designer with diverse experience across public, private and academic sectors in Australia and overseas. Simon currently teaches and researches at the University of Western Australia and leads Rhizome, a landscape and environmental consultancy.

Katie Kingery-Page is a landscape architect and educator at Kansas State University. Her training is in sculpture, art theory, ecology, and landscape architecture. Her design process is based on the use of ethnographic methods in participatory design to answer the question: ‘Whose meaning and values are embedded in public landscapes?’

Mark Klopfer is a founding partner of Klopfer Martin Design Group and Professor of Architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology. He is registered as both an architect and landscape architect, and his interests lie at the intersection of both disciplines. He believes that freehand drawing and study abroad are essential experiences in design education.

Ann Komara teaches landscape history, design studios, fieldwork and seminar classes at the University of Colorado at Denver. Her scholarship on urban landscapes of Second Empire Paris has been supported by the Graham Foundation, Camargo Foundation and two Dumbarton Oaks Fellowships. She earned her MLA and MArch History degrees from the University of Virginia.

Joern Langhorst is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Colorado Denver. In his teaching, research and creative practice he explores the interactions and relationships between people and landscape, arguing for a ‘right to landscape.’ His approaches involve multiple perspectives and disciplines, establishing a methodology he calls ‘landscape forensics.’

Caroline Lavoie is a French-Canadian-American professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning at Utah State University, where she teaches planning and design through seeing and drawing. Caroline is also an artist and has exhibited her drawings globally. She is the recipient of the CELA 2019 Award for Design Studio Teaching. In 2023 she was a Fulbright Specialist in Azerbaijan.

Gini Lee is a landscape architect, interior designer and pastoralist, Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and Adjunct Professor at RMIT University and the University of Adelaide. Her multidisciplinary design research into the water landscapes of diverse territories contributes to the scientific, cultural, and indigenous understanding of fragile landscapes.

Phoebe Lickwar is Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and Principal of FORGE Landscape Architecture. Her work focuses on designing for climate resilient urban agroecology, preserving agrarian heritage landscapes, and restoring degraded agricultural lands. She is the 2022 recipient of the Garden Club of America Rome Prize and co-author of Farmscape: The Design of Productive Landscapes.

Nancy Locke is a practicing landscape architect and photographer of the cultural landscapes of the American West. She is a principal at Stantec in Denver, Colorado, and an adjunct professor in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado at Denver. Underlying all her work is curiosity about places and the relationships between people and the land.

Cat Soergel Marshall is a landscape architect, artist and educator who teaches her students how to read the landscape and whose work focuses on the role of representation and the creative design process. She is Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator of Landscape Architecture at Kent State University.

Evan Mather is an award-winning Los Angeles-based landscape architect and filmmaker who focuses on using technology for site context research, generating design solutions, and improving project delivery. He is adept at working with diverse communities to collaboratively craft design solutions that are reflective of their culture context, natural ecology, and aspirational visions.

Suzanne Mathew is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. She is a registered landscape architect with a multidisciplinary background in biology, architecture, and landscape architecture, and her work draws on cross-disciplinary approaches to measure and visualize the phenomenological qualities of landscape space.

Mary Pat McGuire is Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, where she serves as MLA Program Chair and Dean’s Fellow for Research. Her teaching, research, and engagement work toward regenerating urban land and urban ground for climate adaptation and design justice.

Patrick A. Miller believes that to educate one must see deeply the person being taught. Guided by this goal, he has spent forty-seven years as an educator in the US and Canada. Recognition for his work includes the Outstanding Educator Award (CELA), the Jot Carpenter Medal (ASLA), and the Meade Palmer Medal (Virginia Chapter of ASLA).

Brett Milligan is Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of California, Davis. He is a founding member of the Dredge Research Collaborative and director of the Metamorphic Landscapes Lab, dedicated to prototyping adaptation to conditions of accelerated climatic and environmental change through applied transdisciplinary design research.

Elisabeth ‘Lisa’ Orr received her MLA from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002 and has practiced landscape architecture and planning for over 20 years. A native West Virginian, Lisa joined the faculty of West Virginia University in 2012. Her research investigates vernacular cultural landscapes in Appalachia, particularly West Virginia.

David de la Peña is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design at the University of California, Davis, where his research and teaching focuses on cultural landscapes, engagement methods, and urbanism. He holds graduate degrees in architecture, urban design, and environmental planning from UT Austin and UC Berkeley.

Meireles de Pinho is an artist and sculptor who studied fine arts and sculpture at the University of Porto. Since 1988 he has frequently participated in collective and individual exhibitions with works of drawing, sculpture and other installations. In all these experiences and approaches, drawing has been part of his work process as a reverberation of thinking and acting.

Joseph Ragsdale is Professor of Landscape Architecture at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He is a licensed landscape architect and Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. His current teaching and practice focus on landscape materials, design research, and sustainability issues in built environments and urban landscapes.

Maura Rockcastle is a landscape architect and co-founder and principal of TEN x TEN. With a background in printmaking and sculpture, she balances a rigorous approach to leadership and design innovation with a conceptual sensibility rooted in process. Her professional experience is focused on cultural, institutional, and complex public realm projects.

Deni Ruggeri is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Maryland and an engaged educator, scholar, and practitioner. His work seeks to advance landscape democracy through landscape-based action-research processes of co-creation, reparatory justice, and human empowerment. Since 2018 he has served as Executive Director of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA).

Michael Sánchez is a registered landscape architect and Assistant Professor of Practice and Co-Director of the Rural Communities Design Initiative (RCDI) at the Washington State University School of Design and Construction. He is the eastern Member-at-Large for the Washington State Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA).

Elinor Scarth is a landscape architect working and teaching in an international context and at a range of design scales. She has led interdisciplinary design projects from design concept to construction. Her design practice, research, and teaching are all enriched by a ‘making with’ approach.

Brendan Sullivan Shea is an educator and designer whose work spans architecture, technology, and collaborative practice. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Master of Architecture from Princeton University. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona.

Henrik Schultz is a landscape architect and co-founder of the consultancies Stein+Schultz and landschaft3*. He is Professor of Landscape Design and Regional Development at the Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences. His research and publications focus on climate-resilient city structures, sustainable mobility, and walking as creative practice.

Zeinab Tag-Eldeen was an architect, urban planner, and Professor in the Department of Urban and Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala. She died of Covid-19 in 2020.

Rennie Tang is a designer and educator based in Los Angeles who explores human movement as a language for developing design and pedagogical methodologies. Her projects are fueled by interdisciplinary collaborations with artists, choreographers, and healthcare researchers, and by her combined background in architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, and dance.

Tiago Torres-Campos is a Portuguese landscape architect and Associate Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. He co-edited Postcards from the Anthropocene (2022) and completed a PhD in Architecture by Design, where he explored architecture and landscape as conditions of the geologic.

Jillian Walliss is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Melbourne, where she teaches landscape theory and design studios. She researches the relationship between theory, culture, and contemporary design practice.

Wendy Walls is a lecturer in landscape architectural design at the University of Melbourne. Her research and teaching focuses on the use of data and digital technologies for designing with dynamic climatic phenomena in external open space.

Judith Wasserman is a landscape architect and educator whose exploration of dance and landscape architecture has led to synergetic investigations into the choreographic inscription of environmental design, and how design manipulation serves to activate, inform, and inspire movement and support community. She is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning at West Virginia University.

Amy Whitesides is a Design Critic at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She previously served as Director of Resiliency and Research at Stoss Landscape Urbanism, where she oversaw the planning and design of many award-winning projects. Her practice, teaching, and research focuses on climate adaptation and mitigation through waterfront design and forest stewardship in urban and agricultural landscapes.

Barbara Wilks is principal and founder of W Architecture and Landscape Architecture. She began her career as an architect but soon realized that her interests in public space linked with the profession of landscape architecture. Now as an architect and landscape architect she uses her leadership skills to realign nature and communities.

Blythe Yost practices landscape architecture and makes art–fictional landscapes for creative inspiration. Her firm Yost Design, founded in 2012, designs and builds residential landscapes in the Northeastern US. In 2019 she cofounded and launched Tilly, an online platform with national reach bringing affordable landscape design services to everyday homeowners.

Mary Anne Young is a landscape architect, terrestrial ecologist, and certified ecological restoration practitioner who works for the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority in Ontario. She specializes in ecological restoration and the use of native plants, and loves outdoor adventures of all kinds.