Title: Professor; Director of the Center for Heritage and Society
Institution: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Address: University of Massachusetts Amherst, Olver Design Building, Room 349, 551 North Pleasant Street, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003
Email: ebrabec@umass.edu
Phone: (413) 545-2255
Visit Elizabeth’s Research Website
Research Interests: Cultural Landscape identification; cultural landscape conservation; bio-cultural landscapes; cultural heritage and climate change
Biographical Sketch:
Elizabeth Brabec is Director of the Center for Heritage and Society (https://umass.edu/chs), Professor of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. She is President of the ISCCL (International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes 2023- ; Secretary General 2020-2023) of ICOMOS and member of its Climate Change and Cultural Heritage Working Group. Her current research work is focused on migration and the role of heritage in mitigating the trauma of human movement and displacement, and land conservation and tenure in maintaining climate change resilience. She teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in cultural landscapes and the issues of land use planning and resource conservation at the local, national and international levels.
With a Juris Doctor from the University of Maryland and a Master in Landscape Architecture from the University of Guelph, Canada, she founded the landscape planning firm, Land Ethics, Inc. in Washington, D.C. and Annapolis, Maryland from 1985 to 2002. She taught at the University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, and was Department Head at Utah State University, Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning before joining UMass as Department Head in 2007.
Ongoing and Recent CESU Projects:
- Ethnographic Overview and Assessment for Mount Rushmore National Memorial, South Dakota- MORU
- Ethnographic Overview and Assessment Fort Stanwix National Monument