Our Trustee Spotlight series highlights the people guiding the Landscape Research Group. Through these features, we share the diverse experiences, research interests, and motivations that shape the direction of our work.
This month we introduce our Chair, Professor Laura Alice Watt. She reflects on her academic journey, her move from North America to Iceland’s Westfjords, and the creative passions that travel with her—exploring her multifaceted connection to landscape and her hopes for the future of LRG.
1. What first inspired you to get involved with the Landscape Research Group and what does being a trustee mean to you?
If there is such a thing as a “traditional” LRG member, I am not that—my academic roots are not in geography nor landscape architecture but instead in environmental history and policy, focused on the western U.S. and federally-managed public lands, and particularly on questions about efforts toward preservation and restoration. However, I’ve always used landscape theory as a lens through which to study environmental history, as a way of deciphering the interactions and people and places over time.
I’m originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, where I grew up, got both my undergrad and PhD at the University of California Berkeley, and after working as an environmental planner for four years, ended up teaching at Sonoma State University for fifteen years. My doctoral dissertation eventually evolved into a book, for which David Lowenthal, one of LRG’s founders, wrote the foreword. So I actually came to the LRG somewhat late in my academic career, and joined the Board in that strange all-virtual year of 2020, during which I also relocated to Iceland, initially for a year-long Fulbright grant to conduct historic landscape research, but long story short, ended up staying. In 2021 I took early retirement from Sonoma State, and and despite continuing some teaching at the local-to-me University Centre of the Westfjords, I’ve been slowly stepping away from academia ever since—but as a trustee I still feel committed to using landscape as a lens for understanding people’s interactions with their places, and supporting further research, analysis, and interpretation by others in this field.
2. What are you most proud of contributing to LRG during your time as a trustee?
I suppose I’m most proud of my willingness to jump in feet first; I joined the Board only a few months after becoming an LRG member, and was asked to serve as Vice-Chair only a few months after that—even though my role was mostly supportive rather than leading the charge, it was a delight to work so closely with Tim Waterman as Chair, aiming to diversify the board, expand membership, and improve communications with the launch of the new website. Now that I’m Chair myself, I’m hoping to keep us on track with progress already made, and particularly continue our efforts to promote participation, foster collaborations, and ideally develop a 3-5-year strategic plan going forward.
3. How do you see the role of LRG evolving in the coming years and what opportunities should landscape research focus on next?
I think the LRG is very much in an evolutionary phase—over the past five years we have focused on broadening our ideas of direction and membership participation, and we’ve just conducted a membership survey which hopefully will provide some insight into which new directions might be most promising. We’ve also been broadening our geographic scope, from a mostly UK-and-Europe focus previously to a much wider reach around the globe, with members now in 42 countries—but we’re still underrepresented in many regions, including China and more broadly across Asia, as well as fewer than one might expect in the Americas. I’m not certain yet what that evolution will result in, but I think one of our current tasks is to make some choices about which direction(s) we want to emphasize, and work on building those in a fruitful and sustainable way. I believe that emphasising solidarity and unity across borders and cultures in our international landscape community could be especially powerful in today’s divisive political climate.
4. What excites you most about the future of landscape research – both within LRG and in the wider field?
I’m a life-long landscape photographer, having received my first camera when I was eight years old, and working a lot in the past few decades with polaroids and old film cameras (now also attempting to learn some painting techniques as well), and so have an avid interest in bringing the landscape arts more into conversation with the academic and practitioner perspectives; research is definitely not the only avenue to understanding, so I’m interested in helping the LRG explore some of those other avenues as well.
Professor Laura Watt
LRG Chair
Professor Emerita, Dept of Geography, Environmental and Planning, Sonoma State University, USA
Instructor, University Centre of the Westfjords, Iceland
Enjoyed reading this trustee Q&A but not yet a member?
Becoming an LRG member means you can help shape the organisation’s future. Members can vote in Board of Trustees elections and even stand for election themselves.
You’ll also enjoy a rage of benefits: access to our peer-reviewed journal Landscape Research plus five other publications, eligibility to apply for the LRG Research Fund, the chance to join Critical Field Studies, and opportunities to share your work within a truly global community.
If you’re not yet a member, there’s never been a better time to join and get involved.