Dr. Tiffany Kaewen Dang
Job title:
Lecturer in Landscape Architecture
Office:
2.21, Evolution House
Research Output:
Edinburgh Research Explorer linkBiography
Tiffany Kaewen Dang is a landscape scholar working at the intersection of landscape studies, posthumanism, urban theory, settler colonialism, and decoloniality. Broadly speaking, her research is focused on the settler colonial geographies of Canada (and the Americas, to a certain extent). Her current research explores how other-than-human landscape systems and infrastructural systems can interact in generative ways. She is also investigating topics related to the significance of trans-Pacific migrations on the infrastructural histories of the Americas.
Tiffany has PhD in geography from the University of Cambridge. Her PhD thesis, "Nature Unsettled: the making of the wilderness imaginary and the Canadian settler state," explored the relationship between nature and the Canadian settler colonial state through the conceptual lens of landscape studies, linking with themes from urban geographies, other-than-human geographies, and racial histories. Tiffany also holds a Master in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University and a Bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Toronto.
Prior to joining the University of Edinburgh, Tiffany previously held the position of Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London where she led masters level studios in landscape architecture. In a past life, Tiffany has also had (very!) brief stints in professional landscape architectural practice where she worked at Topotek 1 in Berlin and West 8 in New York City. She is originally from Treaty 6 territory in Western Canada.
Research interests
- Settler colonial landscapes
- Other-than-human geographies
- Urban theory
- History of infrastructure
- Decolonial futures
Tiffany teaches a variety of courses including design studios and history/theory courses in the MA Landscape Architecture programme at ESALA. Her teaching is research-led and future oriented, as she believes this approach empowers students to push the boundaries of both contemporary theory and landscape architectural practice.
Tiffany is currently accepting PhD students.
Research
Research
Generally, Tiffany's research can be characterized by three conceptual frameworks which sometimes overlap:
(i.) multi-species knowledge-making; (ii.) infrastructures of settler colonialism; and (iii.) decolonial pedagogy.
(i.) Multi-species knowledge-making: I am interested in exploring the potentialities of other-than-human agency (including both individual species and landscape systems) in creating radical landscape change. This work is inspired by the conceptual overlaps and generative frictions offered by the different ontological approaches to interspecies thinking and other-than-human life given by Indigenous and post-humanist discourses.
(ii.) Infrastructures of settler colonialism: As material markers of colonialism on the landscape, infrastructure offers a grounded framework for exploring both the histories and futures of settler colonial geographies. Using infrastructure, I explore the racial dimensions of settler colonialism and the landscape disfigurations caused by other-than-human refusals.
(iii.) Decolonial pedagogy: Building on themes explored in Decolonizing Landscape (2021), I am interested in exploring decolonial ways of teaching in landscape architecture. In particular, the way in which history is taught at the undergraduate level needs reforming in order to self-reflexively explicate how centuries of Western cultural hegemony has impacted academic knowledge production.
Selected publications:
Dang, Tiffany Kaewen. (2024, in press). The Inscrutable Mire: designing with other-than-human agency, in Reclaiming Colonial Architecture, edited by T. Sengupta & S. King. RIBA Publishing.
Dang, Tiffany Kaewen. (2021). Decolonizing Landscape, Landscape Research 46(7), 1004-1016. DOI: 10.1080/01426397.2021.1935820
Dang, Tiffany Kaewen. (2021). Grids and Parks: Two Sides of an Extractive World-view, Scapegoat: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy 12/13 “c\a\n\a\d\a: delineating nation state capitalism” edited by David Fortin and Adrian Blackwell.
Dang, Tiffany Kaewen. (2018). A Glacial Pace: Delineating the Contours of Colonization in Canada’s National Parks System, Extraction Empire edited by Pierre Belanger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 520-39.
Selected Awards:
2022: Best Paper Prize, Landscape Research Group (for the paper "Decolonizing Landscape")
2019: Linda Souter Humanities Award, Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW)
2019: Doctoral Fellowship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)
2018: Gunter A. Schoch Research Bursary, Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation (LACF)
2018: JBC Watkins Award: Architecture, Canada Council for the Arts (CCA)
