The School of Environmental Design and Rural Development (SEDRD) is pleased to welcome Afshin Ashari and Zannah Matson as new assistant professors in landscape architecture.
Afshin Ashari, comes to SEDRD from professional practice, most recently working with Brooks McIlroy Inc. in Toronto; an interdisciplinary firm of architects, landscape architects, planners, and urban designers.
His professional practice experience premised on parks, open space, and site naturalization, institutional and mixed-land uses, and Indigenous communities offers opportune versatility within SEDRD’s landscape architecture programs’ curricula. Ashari will begin the role in August 2021.
Zannah Matson comes to SEDRD from her previous appointment as assistant teaching professor in the Penn State Department of Landscape Architecture and a Design for Spatial Justice fellow at the University of Oregon Department of Landscape Architecture.
Zannah’s research and design work has tremendous appeal focusing on the histories and contemporary reinterpretations of landscapes throughout processes of colonization, violence, and state infrastructure projects. Zannah will begin the role in Fall 2021.
"We're absolutely honoured to have both Zannah and Afshin join our faculty,” says Dr. Sean Kelly, SEDRD director. “The backgrounds of Zannah and Afshin are truly exciting, contemporary, and desired; these are tremendous additions for our LA programs’ and enhances our offering of current, real-world practice and experiential learning opportunities to our BLA and MLA students.”