Thaïsa Way

Subject Specialty

Professional Biography

Thaïsa Way is the Director of Garden and Landscape Studies (GLS), Dumbarton Oaks. She also serves as the PI for the Mellon funded “Democracy and Landscape: Race, Identity, and Difference Initiative.” She brings a deep knowledge of Dumbarton Oaks, appreciation for its importance to her field (the garden and Beatrix Farrand, the designer, were a focus of her first book), and affection for it as an institution from having served two terms as a senior fellow.

Dr. Way holds a PhD from Cornell University, a Master of Architectural History from the University of Virginia, and a BS from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome (2016) and a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (2018). She was awarded the CELA Outstanding Educator Award in 2019 and the Mercedes Bass Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome in 2023. She is a scholar of landscape history teaching in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University and previously at the College of Built Environments, University of Washington, Seattle. As a leader in the academy, Dr. Way was elected Chair of Faculty Senate at the University of Washington (2016-2019) and continues to mentor scholar/ leaders in universities across the nation. Dr. Way served as founding director of Urban@UW, a coalition of urban researchers and teachers collaboratively addressing complex urban challenges. She also founded and leads the  Deans Equity and Inclusion Initiative,  comprised of 40 leaders of design and planning programs across the nation.  This initiative seeks to collectively move design and planning practices towards a more just future through how we teach, train, and educate the next generation, with a focus on mentoring early career faculty. Dr. Way is currently on the Board of Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians, a jury member for the On the Brinck Book Award (University of New Mexico) and the Practice Award (Pratt University), as well as serving as the academic representative for the Landscape Architecture CEO Roundtable among other roles.

While she has been awarded multiple research and teaching grants, the most recent is to lead a 2024 NEH Summer Institute for Faculty in Higher Education “Towards a People’s History of Landscape: Black and Indigenous Narratives” with Drs. Andrea Roberts (UVa) and Kathryn Howell (UMD). This is the second in a series that launched in 2022 at Dumbarton Oaks with a focus on the capital region. Way has also received awards from the NSF, NEH, Mellon Foundation, and the Bullitt Foundation among others.

Dr. Way has published and lectured on feminist histories of landscape architecture and public space in cities. Her book, Unbounded Practices: Women, Landscape Architecture, and Early Twentieth Century Design (University of Virginia Press, 2009) was awarded the J. B. Jackson Book Award in 2012. A second book, From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design: The Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag (University of Washington Press, 2015) explores the narrative of post-industrial cities and the practice of landscape architecture. She has edited two books in urban environmental history and practice including Now Urbanism (Routledge, 2013) with Jeff Hou, Ken Yocom, and Ben Spencer, and a collection titled River Cities, City Rivers (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2018). Her book GGN: 1999-2018 (Timber Press, 2018) was published as a monograph on the important work of the landscape architecture firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, who served as the landscape architects for the National Museum of African American History and Culture among other important public projects.  Her most recent publication is a co-edited book with Eric Avila, Segregation and Resistance in the American Landscape, part of the Dumbarton Oaks GLS Symposium series. She has also published numerous articles and essays on design and land pedagogy, the role of the public realm in a democratic nation, and history of territory and public lands in the 20^th century.