Editorial Team

Anaïs Leger-Smith is an Articles editor for JoLA. She has worked as a landscape architect in design studios in Brussels, London and Bristol and is currently a lecturer and researcher at the Toulouse School of Architecture, France. She teaches in the field of territorial strategies, public space and green infrastructure design, landscape theory and project critique.

Her research interests are focused on design research, biodiversity and the living environment in cities, metropolitan landscapes, participatory urbanism and landscape imaginaries.

She is an editor for the book #6 Landscape Architecture Europe. She is the vice-president of the French Federation for Landscape Architecture (FFP) in Occitanie.

Clara Olóriz Sanjuán, PhD, is a researcher and practicing architect. She is a studio master at the Architectural Association (AA) Landscape Urbanism programme, co-directs the Ground Lab research design initiative and the AA Mexico Visiting School “Metropolitan Landscapes” programme with the Monterrey Institute of Technology. Her practice focuses on the design and visualisation of urban and landscape policies to address climate crises from an environmental justice perspective. She understands landscapes as a political technology of territory that redefines nature-society relations.

Along with her PhD research and practice within the Ground Lab initiative, she has contributed to several congresses, magazines and books related to innovations in landscape architecture and territory at the intersection between history, theory and practice. Fellowships, grants and awards from the British Council, Conacyt, Bilbao Ekintza, Caja Madrid, Caja de Arquitectos and AA Publications Fellowship have supported her research. She was awarded a Graham Foundation grant for the publication of Landscape as Territory (Actar, 2019).

Maria Gabriella Trovato is an articles editor for JoLA. She is an associate professor of Global Landscape Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), School of Landscape Architecture, where she leads the International Master’s Programme in Landscape Architecture for Global Sustainability. Her research focuses on landscapes in contexts of migration, conflict and crisis, with a particular emphasis on the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions. She has led and participated in numerous international research projects funded by the EU, Erasmus+, FAO, and Horizon 2020, including Landscape in Emergency and Advancing Alternative Migration Governance.

Trovato is the founder and director of the Eastern Mediterranean Landscape Observatory (EMLO), co-responsible for the Centre for Landscape Democracy (CLaD), Chair of Landscape Architects Without Borders (IFLA), and a member of the UNISCAPE Executive Board. She has held academic positions in Italy, Lebanon, Canada and Morocco, and is currently a visiting professor at the Politecnico di Milano.

Her recent publications include “Ongoing Crises in Beirut: Resistance and Resilience as Everyday Life” (City special feature, 2025) as well as further articles in City, IJIA, Ri-Vista and Land, contributing to debates on landscape theory, resilience and spatial practices in contested territories.

Sonia Keravel is the Under the Sky editor for JoLA. She is a landscape architect and has a PhD in geography. She is currently a lecturer and researcher at the École Nationale Supérieure de Paysage, Versailles-Marseille. She teaches design studios on subjects such as project critique and the history of landscape design.

Her research work focuses on the specificity of the landscape architect’s approach, the history and criticism of landscape architecture design and the role of visual representations and particularly photography in the practice of landscape architecture.

She contributed to the ANR Photopaysage (2014-2017) and published Passeurs de paysage (2015); she co-coordinated the ‘project and photography’ dossier of the Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère (2019).

Pepa Morán Núñez, PhD, architect and landscape architect, is a professor in the Department of Urbanism, Territory and Landscape (DUTP) at the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). Since 2024, she has served as coordinator of the official Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture (MBLandArch-UPC).

Her research focuses on landscape architecture design as a means of expanding the understanding of landscape disturbances and dynamics, and on their integration into landscape planning and management. Her doctoral thesis and recent research explore wildfire disturbance and landscape planning in Mediterranean metropolitan areas.

Pepa’s research has been developed through international projects such as the WUICOM-BCN ‘Resilient Wildfire Interface Communities’ research project and the FIRE-RES Horizon 2020 project. Since 2018, she has been a member of the board of trustees of the Pau Costa Foundation, whose mission is to raise public awareness of wildfire risk management from a fire-ecology perspective. In parallel, she has developed a professional career as a landscape architect over the past fifteen years, focusing on the design and construction of public spaces and landscape planning.

Her recent publications include ‘Operational Gardens: Between Functionality and Aesthetic Experience’ in Quaderns, as well as articles in Ambio, Obradoiro and JoLA, contributing to ongoing debates on landscape architecture design and visual representation.

Ursula Wieser Benedetti is the Reviews editor for JoLA. She is a landscape architect and a Japanologist. She has practiced as a landscape architect in France, Austria and Italy and holds a PhD in Landscape Architectural History.

Her research interests focus on Japan, landscape architecture in Belgium, and the question of limits in the landscape. She is a senior researcher at BALA Brussels. She has directed several publications, including Brussels, Two and a Half Centuries of Public Parks and Gardens (2019).