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E. Umbanhowar

Elizabeth Umbanhowar, PLA, ASLA, LEED AP is a practicing landscape architect and senior lecturer at the University of Washington (UW) and is currently pursuing her PhD in the interdisciplinary program in the Built Environment at UW. She is also concurrently completing a PhD Certificate in Film Studies through Comparative Literature and is the recipient of the Valle Scholarship for dissertation research in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2020. With a background in fine arts, art history and environmental education, her practice work has focused on large-scale public infrastructure, nonmotorized transportation, urban design, public involvement, and habitat restoration. Her research interests include: the history and representation of urban form and the technologies that reflect and influence human experience; design for mobility in public space—walking, running, biking, hiking—to foster individual well-being, democracy and social healing; the use of film and digital media as research, teaching, and design tools; and phenomenology and the role of art in exploring the relationship of time, movement and the body to city form. She teaches advanced studios and lecture courses that explore the intersections of technology and media, pilgrimage and movement, and the nature of the Anthropocene, including Landscape and Art (L507), The City and the Body / Politic: Designing Democracy at City Hall Park (L498), Cities on Screen (BE 598), The History of Urban Landscapes: The Nature of Cities (L454), Cinematic Cities: Finding/Filming/Fostering Freeway Park (L498)  and L498 Walking in the Anthropocene: Pilgrimage, Politics and Design in the Age of Crisis.