Editorial Team

Anaïs Leger-Smith is an Articles editor for JoLA. She has worked as a landscape architect in design studios in Brussels, London and Bristol and is currently a lecturer and researcher at the Toulouse School of Architecture, France. She teaches in the field of territorial strategies, public space and green infrastructure design, landscape theory and project critique. Her research interests are focused on design research, biodiversity and the living environment in cities, metropolitan landscapes, participatory urbanism and landscape imaginaries. She is an editor for the forthcoming book #6 Landscape Architecture Europe. She is the vice-president of the French Federation for Landscape Architecture (FFP) in Occitanie.

Burcu Yigit Turan is an Articles editor for JoLA. She is a senior lecturer in the subject area of ‘planning in cultural environments’ at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Landscape Architecture Division, Uppsala. Her works have generated at the intersections of landscape architecture, urbanism and critical social theory and cultural studies, and focused on reproduction of social inequality in spatial planning and design. Her recent works delineate the role of public space and landscape production in urban bordering, (neo)colonial urbanism, racialization and segregation.

Maria Hellström Reimer is an Articles editor for JoLA. She is professor of Design in Theory and Practice at Malmö University, School of Arts and Communication. With a background in Fine Arts, she holds a PhD and Readership in landscape architecture, with a specialization in theoretical and applied aesthetics.
Her research is interdisciplinary, including questions of aesthetic agency, value and societal change. She is the former director of D!, the national PhD school in design, and now works parttime for the Swedish Research Council as a scientific adviser in artistic research. She has been affiliated with several arts & design research environments in Europe and the US, most recently as a visiting professor at the Department of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University (2019). Recent publications include Translocality and Translocal Subjectivities: A Research Overview Across the Fields of Migration, Culture, and Urban Studies (with Erin Cory and Per Möller; MISTRA Urban Futures Report 2020:4) and ‘Playing the Green Card: The Commodifying Fiction of a Derivative Jardin-Forêt’ (Architecture and Culture 5, 2017).

Francisca Lima is an Articles editor for JoLA. She is a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, where she teaches History and Theory of Landscape Architecture and directs the Master in Landscape Architecture Programme. Francisca’s research interests range from perception of landscape, to urban decline and green spaces in relation to community engagement and wellbeing.
Since 2005 she has been collaborating in research projects with LEAF Research Center and the Philosophy Research Centre of the University of Lisbon. Francisca has also co-chaired the conferences, Shrinking Cities I Expanding Landscapes (2013) and Landscape and Life (2017), with the support of the University of Edinburgh and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation respectively, among other sponsors, and has been a guest co-editor of the Shrinking Cities I Expanding Landscapes’s special issue, Landscape Research Journal (2017).”

Sonia Keravel is the Under the Sky editor for JoLA. She is a landscape architect and has a PhD in geography. She is currently a lecturer and researcher at the École Nationale Supérieure de Paysage, Versailles-Marseille. She teaches design studios on subjects such as project critique and the history of landscape design. Her research work focuses on the specificity of the landscape architect’s approach, the history and criticism of landscape architecture design and the role of visual representations and particularly photography in the practice of landscape architecture. She contributed to the ANR Photopaysage (2014-2017) and published Passeurs de paysage (2015); she co-coordinated the ‘project and photography’ dossier of the Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère (2019).

Usue Ruiz Arana is the Thinking Eye editor for JoLA, a role informed by her keen interest in design and art as forms of research. She is a landscape architect and educator at Newcastle University. She is the programme director of the Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA), and teaches across design studios, design thesis and construction modules. Usue’s current research is focused on two interrelated strands: soundscapes and more than human conceptualizations for landscape architecture practice. Through her research, Usue seeks to affirm design and art as forms of research, drawing from her experimental arts methods that include soundwalks, photography and temporary installations, and her 20-year career in practice.

Ursula Wieser Benedetti is the Reviews editor for JoLA. She is a landscape architect and a Japanologist. She has practiced as a landscape architect in France, Austria and Italy and holds a PhD in Landscape and Garden History. Her research interests focus on Japan, landscape architecture in Belgium, and the question of limits in the landscape. She currently works at the CIVA in Brussels, where she curates exhibitions and events around contemporary landscape architecture and the history of landscape architecture, and organizes the René Pechère literary Prize, distinguishing books of excellence in the realm of landscape architecture. She has directed several publications, including Brussels, Two and a Half Centuries of Public Parks and Gardens (2019).