Biographies > Speakers

Bernadette Blanchon (France) is a certified architect, associate professor at the ENSP Versailles-Marseille, and member of the Laboratoire de Recherche en Projet de Paysage whose research focuses on urban open space since World War II, social housing, and the contributions of female landscape architects. As a founding editor of the Journal of Landscape Architecture, she was responsible for the project review section Under the Sky. She is currently a member of Commission du Vieux Paris, the advisory commission for buildings and landscapes in Paris).

 Cristina Castel-Branco (Portugal) is a landscape architect and professor at the University of Lisbon, who holds a master's in landscape architecture and doctorate in garden history. She has published widely on subjects in landscape history, restoration, and ecological design, and was a founder of the Board of the Historic Gardens Association, the Botanical Garden of Ajuda, and a member of the UNESCO-ICOMOS committee on cultural landscapes. In Lisbon, she also maintains a professional practice, and has been awarded the Officier des Arts et des Lettres and the Japanese Government Praise of Merit.

 Sonja Dümpelmann (Germany), previously professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, is Professor and Chair of Environmental Humanities at Ludwig- Maximilians-Universität Munich, where she also co-directs the Rachel Carson Center. Her research focuses on the history of urban landscapes and environments; her books include Landscapes for Sport: Histories of Physical Exercise, Sport, and Health (editor, 2022), and Seeing Trees: A History of Street Trees in New York City and Berlin (2019).

 Imke van Hellemondt (Netherlands) is an architectural historian at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research focuses on nature-culture relationships in Dutch landscape design during the 1960s and 1970s. She is co-investigator for the research project "Uncovering Hidden Histories in Landscape Architecture", and a participant in the landscape architecture archive project "Het geheugen van het ontworpen landschap"(The Memory of the Designed Landscape) for the New Institute in Rotterdam.

Eric Hennaut (Belgium) is an art historian who specializes in the history of architecture and gardens. After working as a researcher at the Archives of Modern Architecture and the René Pechère Library, he currently serves as curator of Landscapes, Gardens, and Urban Ecosystems at CIVA in Brussels. He also teaches in the Faculty of Architecture at the Free University of Brussels, and in its masters program in architectural heritage, heading courses in the histories of gardens and architecture.

 Lars Hopstock (Germany) received his doctorate in landscape history from the University of Sheffield, and for many years divided his time between practice and academia. Currently a Junior Professor of Landscape Architecture in the architecture program at the University of Kaiserslautern (RPTU) his research centers on twentieth-century landscapes, most recently on the history of education in garden design. Other subjects of interest include the theories of design, the aesthetics of nature, and the critique of urban open space.

 Dorothée Imbert (United States) is Director of the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University, where she holds the Hubert C. Schmidt ’38 Chair in landscape architecture She has published extensively on modernism in landscape architecture, contemporary practice, and productive landscapes. Her books include The Modernist Garden in France (1993); Between Garden and City: Jean Canneel-Claes and Landscape Modernism (2009); more recently she edited Food and the City: Histories of Culture and Cultivation (2015).

 Anna Jakobsson (Sweden) is a landscape architect with a PhD in landscape architecture and planning from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Alnarp. She is currently Senior Lecturer at the SLU Alnarp, where her teaching and research focus on the history, theory, and conservation of gardens, parks, and landscape architecture—with a particular focus on plants.

Lilli Lička (Austria) is a Vienna-based landscape architect and professor, who heads the Institute of Landscape Architecture at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU), and the practice LL-L Landscape Architecture. She is the co-founder of Nextland, a curated online collection with publications on contemporary landscape architecture; LArchiv: Archive for Austrian Landscape Architecture; and the Network of European Landscape Architecture Archives. Her design work and research center on public spaces, streets, parks, housing and corporate landscapes.

 Ursula Wieser Benedetti (Belgium) is a landscape architect and Japanologist who holds a PhD in landscape history. Having previously practiced as a landscape architect in France, Austria, and Italy for more than twenty years, she is presently Curator of Landscape Architecture, the History of Gardens, and Ecosystems at the CIVA archive and museum in Brussels.

 Jan Woudstra (United Kingdom) is a landscape architect, historian, and Reader in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield. He previously taught at the Architectural Association in London, and for many years has worked in practice, including his own firm Environmental Design Associates. His PhD thesis examined trends in landscape modernism from five countries during the years 1900 to 1968; since then he has since published on various modern landscape architects including Wim Boer, Mien Ruys, Christopher Tunnard, and Brenda Colvin.