Alissa Ujie Diamond, assistant professor of urban regional planning, approaches research and teaching through the framework of entangled landscapes. This approach centers on justice and equity, and draws out relationships across scales and through time, denaturalizes accepted histories and social practices, and opens paths to alternative trajectories for the fields of planning and design. 

Her research has two facets. First, her historically-based work focuses on racial capitalism, resistances, and spatial history in the United States to understand and unravel the root causes and historical trajectories of today’s persistent spatialized inequalities. Second, her work is future-facing, recovering rival genealogies of knowledge for imagining alternative possibilities for urban change and spatial intervention. Diamond’s teaching and scholarship draws on 15 years of professional experience at the national forefront of design across fields, with an early-career focus on drawing connections between building architecture, urban and regional planning, and landscape architecture.

• PhD, School of Architecture, University of Virginia
• MLA, School of Architecture, University of Virginia
  
• BSArch, School of Architecture, University of Virginia

Research Awards and Fellowships

• Finalist for McHarg Center Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Pennsylvania
• Mellon Summer Fellow in Urban Humanities at Dumbarton Oaks
• University of Virginia Center for Cultural Landscapes Sara Shallenberger Brown Research Fellow
• Governor’s Fellowship Recipient University of Virginia
  

Teaching-Related Awards

• All-University Graduate Teaching Award, University of Virginia
• VA APA Honorable Mention, Falls Church Public Art Policy
  Drafted by students in Profs. Diamond and Wilson’s Practicum (PLAN 6090) class

Design and Professional Awards

• ASLA Honor Award, General Design: Duke University Water Reclamation Pond, Nelson Byrd Woltz
  
• ULI Nashville Open Space Award: Centennial Park Phase I Nashville, TN, Nelson Byrd Woltz
  
• ASLA Honor Award: Memorial Park Master Plan Houston, TX, Nelson Byrd Woltz
• ASLA Honor Award for Analysis and Planning: Rockefeller Park Strategic Master Plan Cleveland, OH Siteworks Studio
  
• UVA Helen and Stanley Abbott Award for Design Excellence, University of Virginia
• Virginia Chapter ASLA Student Certificate of Honor
  
• St. Louis Chapter AIA Honor Award: Emerson Corporate HQ Auditorium Renovations, Fox Architects
• Department of Architecture Award for Excellence in Design
  University of Virginia