When I say that I like and value working in a multidisciplinary way (in my own work and with that characteristic in collaborations), I am not saying that because it may be en vogue to say this. Multidisciplinary approaches do appear to be becoming more common and it is a core feature of my own approach.
I studied psychology for my BA at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. I later got ‘hooked on urbanism’ (after my first experience living a walkable, urban lifestyle in my early 20s) and moved to Sweden where I would take an Environmental Psychology course at Lund University and later study for my first (International) Masters in Spatial Planning at KTH Royal Institute of Technology (KTH).
I remember the first day in that Masters program, one of the Professors teased and questioned what I was doing in the program. I was the only one there from a ‘soft’ science background and I guess in his view, I did not ‘belong’ in a disciplinary sense.
I went on to work on interesting projects in the program, my favorite being a study I conceptualized on the preservation and conversion of a former industrial site (for which the district mayor showed up to hear our presentation). My thesis was an environmental psychological approach to the human use of underground space, a theme I returned to last year (about 22 years since I entered that program at KTH), to write my first two research papers on (reviewed, accepted and due out soon!)
My interest in historic preservation and neighborhood scale development and planning led to my enrolling in my 2nd Masters program at Cornell University some years later and today I am in the 3rd year of my 4 year PhD program at the Institute of Geography & Spatial Organization, focused on issues of urban mobility, especially walkability and broadly in themes of urban resilience.
I view all my disciplines studied and more as offering important strands of thought, research, and practice. I greatly value the opportunity to learn and collaborate with others on how certain topics and research questions can be explored and studied via diverse disciplinary lenses and approaches.
My 2025 is already stacked with opportunities to do precisely this – some of them projects and collaborations begun last year and others that will be freshly laid out in the coming months.
Here’s to your ‘get up & go’ and being able to work in ways meaningful to you.
