Kathryn Gleason

Kathryn Gleason is Professor Emerita of Landscape Architecture. Trained as a landscape architect (BSLA Cornell, MLA Harvard) and archaeologist (DPhil Oxford), she is an internationally renowned specialist on the archaeology and history of designed landscapes in the ancient Roman world. Her four decades of field work have been conducted most recently at Pompeii and Stabiae, Italy; Petra, Jordan; Caesarea, Israel and Nagaur, Rajasthan, India. A Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, the Albright Institute of Jerusalem, and the American Society of Landscape Architects, she has published extensively and currently serves as Senior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Studies.

As a professor of contemporary design, she brings her research to bear on the 21st century landscape by teaching approaches to designing with the material remains of the past and the longue durée of American landscapes, shaped by centuries of indigenous cultural practices that are suppressed when we design without recognizing them. Her design studios have included Ithaca Gun and Falls, Akwesasne Housing Authority (St. Regis Mohawk), and the Winter Palaces of Wadi Qelt, Jericho, Palestinian Territories.

Selected Publications

• Jashemski, Wilhelmina with Kathryn Gleason (Executive Editor), Kim Hartswick, and Amina-Aïcha Malek. Gardens of the Roman Empire, Cambridge University Press, 2018. And affiliated digital project, 2021: https://roman-gardens.github.io/about/
• Howe, Thomas N., Ian Sutherland, Kathryn Gleason, Michele Palmer. The Excavation and Study of the Garden of the Great Peristyle of the Villa Arianna, Stabiae, 2007-2012, Quaderni di Studi Pompeiani VI, 2016. 
• Gleason, Kathryn, Editor. Gardens of Antiquity, Volume 1, Cultural History of Gardens, Michael Leslie and John Dixon Hunt, Series Editors. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2013