Jie Tang

Academic Qualifications

2006-2010 Bachelor of Landscape Design, Dalian Polytechnic University

2010-2012 Master of Landscape Studies, University of Sheffield

2012-2016 PhD in Landscape, University of Sheffield

Research Biography

For my Masters’ dissertation I studied the modern values that affected landscape treatment in traditional Chinese villages, leading me to propose various conservation approaches. This led to wider issues concerning the threats to rural landscapes in China, which I have carried through in a PhD project that further explores rural settlement patterns and traditional life. In the initial phase of the research and in attempting to make this a manageable project, while also enabling specific case studies, it was narrowed down to villages along the Chinese Grand Canal that were noticed, in the preliminary scoping survey, as being distinctive from those further land inward. This led to questions such as: ‘How did and does the waterway influence the surrounding landscape? What is the human story behind these differences? Why is change particularly affecting this type of rural landscapes and could anything be done to create positive use and investment that recognizes the past?’ This led to the title of ‘Landscape typologies of rural settlements along the Shandong section of the Chinese Grand Canal’, which not only investigates the physical changes of canal-side rural landscapes from the Qing dynasty to the present, but also aims to inform conservation policy.

The objectives of my PhD research are to:

To distinguish and record field and settlement patterns of Jining, Liaocheng, Dezhou and Zaozhuang along Shandong section of the Grand Canal, based on morphological characteristics.
To identify the process of evolution and historical development of the villages under the influence of the Grand Canal, from the period of Qing dynasty (1644-1912) when the imperial water transportation won its heyday to the present day.
To record traditional life of how people lived along and with the Grand Canal.

Ph.D Supervisor
Dr. Jan Woudstra

Research Interests

My background is landscape architecture, and I am particularly interested in cultural landscapes and conservation, in how environments affect the social and cultural aspects of human life and how these can be ‘read’ in the various vernacular villages and rural landscapes.