Tiffany Kaewen Dang

PhD candidate

Tiffany Kaewen Dang is a landscape scholar from Treaty 6 Territory in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Her research lies at the intersections of landscape, settler-colonial studies, ecology, history, and geography. She is interested in using decolonial approaches to subvert the dominant power structures and infrastructural networks shaping territory today.

Biography

Qualifications

• PhD, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge (2018 – )
• MLA, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University (2014 – 2017)
• BA (Hons) Architecture, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto (2010 – 2013)

Career

• 2015-2018: Landscape Researcher, Designer, Project Architect, OPSYS Landscape Infrastructure Lab, Cambridge, MA, USA
• 2015-2017: Research Assistant, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
• 2015/06-08: Intern Landscape Architect, West 8 Urban Design & Landscape Architecture, New York City, NY, USA
• 2014: Landscape Designer, Topotek 1 Landscape Architects, Berlin, Germany
• 2013: Research Associate, Designing Ecological Tourism Research Lab, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto

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: Hilda Richardson Research Studentship, Newnham College
• 2018: JBC Watkins Award: Architecture, Canada Council for the Arts (CCA)
• 2014: John E. (Jack) Irving Fellowship, Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Research

Tiffany’s current doctoral research examines cultural conceptions and constructions of nature in western Canada and how this has contributed to the formation of settler colonial identity in Canada. This has primarily focused on the five national parks in the Canadian Rocky Mountains as a geographical nexus between Indigenous dispossession, exploitative racialized migrant labour, and colonial infrastructure. The three main theoretical frameworks addressed by this research are (I.) settler colonial critiques of urbanization; (II.) landscape and racialized labour history; (III.) more-than-human infrastructures.

Through this research, Tiffany aims to address the problematic mythologies of the Canadian settler-state, including:

The Myth of Uninhabited Wilderness: In settler-colonial states such as Canada, conceptions of wilderness have been operationalized as an ideological weapon of colonization, masking violent processes of Indigenous dispossession. The representation of Indigenous territories as wild, uninhabited, and uncivilized spaces has served to displace Indigenous peoples, erase Indigenous sovereignties, and depoliticize Indigenous societies.

The Myth of Multiculturalism: The landscapes of the Canadian extractive hinterlands, including the national parks, have been built and serviced on stolen Indigenous territories by the labour of racialized and oppressed people on the peripheries—from the low-wage migrant and indentured Chinese labourers who built the transcontinental railway, to the precariously employed labourers of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker and Temporary Foreign Workers programs of the present day.

Publications

Selected publications:

• 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.
• Belanger, Pierre, Ghazal Jafari, Pablo Escudero, Hernan Bianchi-Benguria, Tiffany Kaewen Dang, and Alexander Arroyo. (2020). No Design on Stolen Land: Dismantling Design’s Dehumanising White Supremacy, Architectural Design 90(1) “The Landscapists” edited by Ed Wall, 120-27.
• 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.

Teaching

• Design Tutor, Landscape Architecture, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23)
• Seminar Instructor, Landscape History and Theory, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (2021-22)
• Lecturer & Supervisor, Settler Colonial Geographies, Part II Paper: Postcolonialism & Decoloniality, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge (LT 2021)
• Visiting Lecturer, MA Environmental Architecture, School of Architecture, Royal College of Art (2019-20)
• Supervisor, Undergraduate Dissertation, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge (2019-20)
• Supervisor, Part II Paper: Global Urbanism, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge (MT 2019)