Cultivating Climate Justice: New Frameworks for Rural Resilience - 1.25 PDH (LA CES/HSW)

Forbes Lipschitz is Associate Professor and the Graduate Chair of Landscape Architecture at the Knowlton School. Her current research investigates the potential of design to reframe and reshape conventional working landscapes. Through public installations and participatory workshops, she explores ways for design to help communities better understand and engage with agricultural systems. Her research has been published nationally and internationally and her creative work has been featured in Landscape Architecture Magazine, Metropolis Magazine, and Smithsonian Magazine. She has been awarded funding from the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research, the Graham Foundation for Fine Arts and the Van Alen Institute.

Alison B. Hirsch, PhD, FAAR, is Associate Professor in the USC School of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Landscape Architecture+Urbanism. At USC, she directs the Landscape Justice Initiative, which focuses on communities that design has not historically reached, in efforts at achieving environmental, climate and spatial justice. One of Alison’s primary research areas centers on rural communities in California’s Central Valley and the vast inequalities inscribed in that landscape reshaped by 150 years of industrial agriculture. Alison was the 2017-2018 Prince Charitable Trusts/Rolland Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy and a 2020-2021 LAF Fellow in Leadership+Innovation.

Thomas Woltz is the Principal and Owner of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects (NBW). He received his Masters of Architecture and Landscape Architecture from UVA and holds an honorary doctorate from the SUNY in Environmental Science and Forestry. He was recognized with the Land for People Award by the Trust for Public Land in 2019 and serves on the Board of Directors of the Cultural Landscape Foundation. Over the past two decades of practice, NBW has developed a unique approach to design using ecological and cultural research as the foundation for creating meaningful landscapes that inspire connection to place.