Faculty Voices on Collaborative Actions
Collaborative research is a powerful approach that brings together individuals from diverse backgrounds to work towards common goals. It can bridge interdisciplinary expertise and lived experiences, involve co-authorship and co-creation, and acknowledge reciprocity across the exchange of ideas.
How can this method shape a scholarship of engagement that supports individuals and communities to shift ideas into actions addressing some of society's most pressing social, civic, economic, and environmental issues?
These videos spotlight our faculty across architecture, landscape architecture, history and planning at the School of Architecture, emphasizing the value of societal impact through a culture of research collaboration and ongoing partnerships.
_mpathic design
Elgin Cleckley
Associate Professor, Architecture
In his 2024 book Empathic Design: Perspectives on Creating Inclusive Spaces, designer and Associate Professor of Architecture Elgin Cleckley lays out an emerging design framework emphasizing an iterative design approach that acknowledges the full history of a place and its people.
Cities Without Work
Suzanne Moomaw, PhD
Chair and Associate Professor, Urban and Environmental Planning
“Investing in human capital…, the ability for people to pivot and work in different industries, is absolutely critical,” shares Associate Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning Suzanne Moomaw, in elaboration of her ongoing analyses of 17 post-industrial cities in the United States that had the highest rates of unemployment circa 1960 to 2010.
Hybrid Typologies/Energy Transitions
Mona El Khafif, PhD
Associate Professor, Architecture and Urban and Environmental Planning
Director, Urban Design
Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban + Environmental Planning Mona El Khafif’s teaching and research investigates the socio-environmental, spatial, and temporal entanglements of the just energy transition. It is developed, in part, through Lithium Territories — an academic collaboration between the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan, and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Cultural Heritage + Digital Technologies
Andrew Johnston, PhD
Associate Professor, Architectural History
Director, Historic Preservation
Associate Professor of Architectural History Andrew Johnston, Director of the Historic Preservation Program, uncovers new narratives of buildings and sites through the intersection of digital technologies and digital humanities. Building rich datasets documenting buildings and landscapes, his collaborative work provides communities with assets to protect cultural heritage.
Cultural Histories/Changing Landscapes
Erin Putalik, PhD
Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture and Architecture
“What are the ways that meaning is ascribed to…. places by the populations that have valued them through time?” Erin Putalik, Assistant Professor of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, asks this question in her ongoing research that addresses how place-based history is central to contemporary discourse around climate change and adaptation.
Disruptive Engagements
CL Bohannon, PhD
Associate Professor, Landscape Architecture
Associate Dean, JEDI
Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture CL Bohannon’s work centers on the methods and pedagogy of community engagement. He believes landscape architects are instrumental in empowering communities to take a more substantive role in design and policy decisions that impact the places where people live.
Co-designing with Indigenous Communities
Phoebe Crisman
Professor, Architecture
Director of Global Studies Program
Professor Phoebe Crisman has been an integral part of numerous transdisciplinary teams of UVA faculty and students who have developed co-design and co-research methodologies with Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate (SWO) citizens, and their NGO partners Nis’to and Makoce Ikikcupi.
Out(sider) Preservation
Andrea Roberts
Associate Professor, Urban and Environmental Planning
Faculty Director, Center for Cultural Landscapes
The Out(sider) Preservation Initiative, led by Dr. Andrea Roberts, invests in commemorative practices and storytelling that reflect place-based migratory histories and bring those considered in the margins of state-sponsored preservation and placemaking to the center of the American commemoration landscape.