Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

Projects that address inter-disciplinary boundaries, between Landscape Architecture, Art, Architecture and Place. I am particularly interested in Research by Design projects

Personal profile

Research Interests

Research Interests

I have a broad research interest in our responsibility of care for and within the natural world.

My research and practice seeks to manifest ecological dependencies and interconnections to evolve dialogical relationships with nature in the climate and biodiversity crises.  I seek to understand and promote the role and potential of Landscape Architecture as a discipline to translate theory from the environmental humanities towards actualising change on the ground through a range of scales and situated design practices. 

My work centres upon acute observations of the landscape and landscape processes made in place and traced through time.  I am interested in nurturing collaborative approaches with humans and more than humans on the ground, in the water, and in the air of the sites that I am fortunate enough to explore and study.   My work seeks to discover the relational and relativizing opportunities of different forms of creative praxis to slow down, harness and make sense of our contact within nature, through drawing, mapping, recording, printmaking, photography and montage as open and sense making practices.

At the present time I am working to activate practice in two very different geographic contexts where the above interests touch down:

The Volcanic Landscapes of the Guatemalan Cordillera in two sites at Volcan Fuego, and Lake Atitlan as a co-investigator through the UKRI GCRF, Ixchel Project. https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE/T010517/1

The Coastal Landscapes of the Eastern Scottish Highlands funded through the Royal Society of Edinburgh Networking Award and a consultancy commission with the Highland Council.   This work is undertaken in collaboration with Anaïs Chanon.  Our research can be viewed here: The Coastal Communities Research Project

In both locations my work examines the implications, risks and opportunities of landscape change as it manifests through both predictable and unpredictable spatial and durational scales in the landscape.  My work seeks to represent the way in which particular landscapes have agential capacities that can be draw out, feedback and carried forward into the collective imagining of resilient futures for all living entities and the material forms upon which we rely in the territory.

In summary

Responsibilities for and within the natural world in the climate and biodiversity emergencies. 

The advancement of new methodologies for the adaptation of UK coastal sites in the climate emergency.

Multi-dimensional and situated spatial planning including mapping practices and counter-mapping practices.

Supporting innovative practices to unite the health of marine and terrestrial living systems.

Representation of the dynamic landscape in terms of communicating time, speed, duration and change.

Situated/ observational/ place based/ collaborative approaches to fieldwork in Landscape Architecture.

Building knowledge from real world inter-relationships within the landscape in particular processes of de-territorialization and re-territorialization.

Landscapes of water – coastal/rain fed/hydrological/loch and lake/riverine/aquatic ecologies.

Gardens and gardening as social acts of transformation.  The way in which new typologies of gardens can support regenerative ecosystems and place based economic strategies.

Representation of the material and sensory spheres experienced within the landscape.

Education/Academic qualification

Master of Arts, Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh College of Art

Award Date: 1 Jan 1999

External positions

External Examiner, The AHO, Oslo

1 May 20181 Jun 2019

Arts Advisory Board Member, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh

1 Apr 2018 → …

Accreditation Panel Chair, Hong Kong Institute of Landscape Architects

1 Mar 2018 → …

External Examiner, Leeds Metropolitan University

1 Mar 2018 → …

Design Review Panel, Architecture and Design Scotland

1 Mar 2010 → …

External Examiner, Manchester Metropolitan University

1 May 20081 Sept 2012

External Examiner, University of Pretoria, South Africa

1 Jan 20081 Dec 2008

Design Review Panel, Architecture and Design Scotland, Architecture and Design Scotland

2008 → …

Keywords

  • NA Architecture
  • Landscape Architecture
  • Place
  • NC Drawing Design Illustration
  • Landscape Representation
  • Landscape Design
  • SD Forestry
  • Trees
  • Arboretum

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