Oct. 28, 2010

On Nov. 9, M. Elen Deming will deliver the Clarence Roy/JJR lecture, also part of the Dean's Speaker Series. "This talk is for anyone who is struggling with a thesis," she said.

A few years ago, M. Elen Deming and Simon Swaffield, both professors of landscape architecture, found themselves editing two of only four English-language scholarly peer-reviewed journals in the field of landscape architecture. The two found themselves playing the role of gatekeeper for the discipline and, in working with a range of peer reviewers, found widely varying standards for evaluating research. Some reviewers championed deductive investigations, others inductive; some only accepted objective work, while others favored subjective artistic work.

"At one point we had a meeting of the minds and realized that we needed to develop a model that could offer a middle way through this jungle of competing standards,"  Deming said.

The result is their co-authored book, Research in Landscape Architecture: Inquiry, Strategy, Design, which will be published early in 2011 by Wiley-Blackwell. Swaffield and Deming have enlarged upon established models of research in order to include a greater range of emergent strategies and in recognition of how much of what is "known" in landscape architecture is socially constructed.

"We are using actual published research to describe how different strategies can meet different intellectual goals. These alternatives are meant to be liberating, but there's probably going to be some pushback,"  Deming said. "Some empiricists might say this scheme is too open-ended, and some artists may say we're imposing overly rigid standards on creative work."

In addition to bridging conflicts between research standards, Deming emphasizes the importance of collaboration between professional landscape architects and academic researchers.

"This talk is for anyone who is struggling with a thesis," she said. "It's aimed at students who are trying to find themselves in the field, and may be working with faculty who have their own biases and specialties all within the same department. This is not at all unusual in a field as interdisciplinary as landscape architecture. Whether interested in objective, generalizable, and/or replicable results, or experiential and participatory work, every researcher can find a home in this scheme,"she said.

Deming is Professor and Head of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. From 1993 to 2008, she taught seminars in the history and theory of landscape architecture as well as design studios at the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY. She was co-editor of Landscape Journal from 2002 to 2006 and sole editor from 2006 to 2009.

M. Elen Deming will deliver the Clarence Roy/JJR lecture, also part of the School of Natural Resources and Environment Dean' Speaker Series, on Tuesday, Nov. 9, at 4:30 p.m. in 1040 Dana, 400 Church Street, Ann Arbor.