Maggie Roe appointed honorary doctor at SLU

Maggie Roe is an internationally recognised scholar in the fields of landscape architecture and landscape planning, and has made a significant collaboration with SLU landscape research and education.  She is an inspiring lecturer and has acted  as an advisor, reviewer and examiner at SLU. She is currently one a director at the Newcastle University Centre for Landscape (NUCoRE), an interdisciplinary research centre with the aim of investigating and promoting interaction between people and landscape. She has had leading roles as an advisor on landscape to various bodies nationally and internationally. She has been the editor of Landscape Research for many years, as well as chair of the Landscape Research Group.

Roe's research focuses on landscape and marine planning and human perception and experience of and relationship to the landscape using interdisciplinary methods and theories, from landscape ecology, participatory/collaborative planning and sociocultural theories. More recently, she is working with coastal and aquatic landscapes, food landscapes and regional policy development. She is also interested in creative method development to co-produce research with stakeholders and communities to understand landscape change. She has an extensive publication list of books, book chapters and peer reviewed papers. 

Maggie Roe:
I am really honoured to accept the award of the degree of Doctor Honoratiorus by the Faculty of Landscape Architecture, Horticulture and Crop Production Science at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).  

I have really enjoyed my long and rewarding association with various Landscape colleagues and students at SLU, including Professor Ingrid Sarlöv-Herlin at Alnarp, and Dr Andrew Butler, Associate Professor at Uppsala, both of whom have collaborated with me in various ways in academic life here in Newcastle University, as well as at SLU.  

I have been inspired by the collegiate approach to academic life at SLU and to the robust and innovative approach to both research and teaching.  Landscape is a field which never leaves you – I think I have lived and breathed this work every day since the beginning of my first degree in landscape architecture, and I wouldn’t have it any other way! 

It means an immense amount to me to receive this degree.  Sometimes in academic life it is hard to understand whether your work has had any effect or recognition. This award is for me an important indicator of the international peer valuation of a body of work developed over many years, and I am more happy than I can say to accept it.