Zannah Matson

Education

PhD candidate, University of Toronto, Department of Geography and Planning
MLA, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design
BA, University of Toronto, Faculty of Arts and Science, (honours specialist in Peace and Conflict Studies | major in Environmental Studies | minor in Urban Studies) 

Bio Summary

Zannah Matson’s research and design work focuses on the histories and contemporary reinterpretations of landscapes throughout processes of colonization, violence, and state infrastructure projects. Her current work traces the afterlives of coloniality through highway construction in Colombia’s Eastern piedmont landscapes to think about power structures, transportation infrastructure, and visual representation in Latin American landscapes more generally. She is a PhD Candidate in Human Geography at the University of Toronto. Her research and education has been funded by numerous donors and awards including a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Award and a Fulbright Scholarship.

Before joining SEDRD, Zannah was an 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 has also taught in Urban Planning, Urban Design, and Geography at a number of different institutions. She has a Masters in Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and in professional practice worked with OPSYS Landscape Infrastructure Lab as Project Manager and Lead Exhibition Designer for the Canada Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. 

Areas of Current Research

• Infrastructural Landscapes
• Visuality and Landscape Formation
• Landscape and Colonialism
• Material Ecologies and Anti-Extractivism