Erin Putalik

Education

PhD, University of Pennsylvania
MArch, University of Michigan
AB, Brown University

Biography

Erin Putalik is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Architecture. Her research focuses on cultural and public landscapes in which there is a long-term human engagement with, and modification of, dynamic natural systems such as those of dunes and marshes. 

Erin works at the intersection of socio-ecological history and natural infrastructure, exploring ways that local communities and stakeholders have engaged with, relied upon, and valued these changing landscapes through long periods of time. Her current book project considers ways that landscapes have been “read”—rendered legible in how they came to be, and how they continue to change—by landscape architects, ecologists, and conservationists, in U.S. Midwest.

Other current projects include a history of vernacular land stewardship practices, focusing on multi-generational farming families on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The initial phase of this work was funded by the Environmental Institute at the University of Virginia (PI) and the current research is supported by the CCA/Mellon Multidisciplinary Research Program. She is also currently collaborating on the Preserving Coastal Parklands Project, a Cooperative Ecosystems Study Unit with the National Park Service and the US Army Corps/Engineering with Nature Program.