Dr. Alex Albans
Dr Alex Albans is a Research Fellow at the West Midlands National Park Lab, investigating landscape as a manifestation of the culturally-framed relationships between people and their territories. Alex’s research-informed teaching at BCU focuses on how designers ‘get to know’ the places they’re working with, and how this impacts their design processes. His background in historical urban geography, mapping and conflict-resolution underpins emerging research exploring how theories and practices of reconciliation can transform relationships with the land.
Alex has a background in historical urban geography and cartography. After graduating with a degree in Geography from Aberystwyth University he worked as a land surveyor and at the Land Registry before re-training as a landscape architect at the University of Central England (now BCU). After a short time in practice Alex returned to BCU to undertake a PhD (‘Site Seeing: Interpreting Site in Landscape Architecture’) with Prof Kathryn Moore.
Towards the end of his PhD Alex began working as an independent mediator specialising in organisational conflict transformation, which led to a time working at Coventry Cathedral’s international reconciliation department. Here, Alex ran arts and community-focused projects and including a new reconciliation network for multi-faith organisations. During this time Alex began developing a new strand of research exploring the extent to which theories and practices of reconciliation might be harnessed to address how society relates to the landscape.
Alex has also worked at the University of Warwick, firstly coordinating their multi-faith Chaplaincy service, and later in the Research Impact department, helping academics communicate the impact of their research.
Returning to BCU as a Research Fellow with the launch of the West Midlands National Park (WMNP), Alex continues to explore the spatial, historical, cultural and conceptual links between the region’s communities and the everyday landscape. Alex has taught on the MA landscape architecture design-process module since enrolling as a PhD student – his pedagogy continues to be informed by his parallel research.