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Scholar | Heritage Policy & Education Advisory | Speaker
Advancing evidence-based policy and higher education reform driven by how everyday people experience old or historic places
About me
I am an international scholar-practitioner pioneering people-centered (groups/sociocultural) and human-centered (individual/psychological) approaches to historic preservation/built heritage conservation within public policy. I provide strategic counsel to leaders navigating the intersection of people and older places.
By bridging environmental psychology, public policy, and heritage conservation, I ground policy, practice, and pedagogy in the relationship between people and older places—centering individual and community place attachment, mental health, and social justice.
What sets my perspective apart is a career spent spanning theory and practice. In addition to my background as a tenured associate professor at the University of Maryland and Chair of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), I bring extensive experience from the trenches—from leading local historic preservation commissions to directing historic sites, managing Main Street programs, conserving architectural materials, curating museums and archives, and navigating federal Section 106/110 compliance. Drawing on this background, I partner with academic institutions, governments, and advocacy groups to drive human-centered reform in public policy, higher education curricula, and preservation pedagogy.
My approach is fully detailed in my book, Managing the Magic of Old Places: Crafting Public Policies for People-Centered Historic Preservation (University of Tennessee Press), which provides policy leaders and educators with an evidence-based roadmap that centers people and their relationship to older places.
Outside of my work in built heritage conservation, I compose electro-folk music under the project name Novit Terminus and help restore ecosystems with a focus on native plant communities. TST
