The University of Sheffield
Department of Landscape


Dr Nicola DempseyNicola Dempsey BA PhD

Lecturer
Telephone: 0114 222 0616
Room 12.13

Email : N.Dempsey@sheffield.ac.uk

Biography

My work spans a number of academic subjects, including sociology, health, architecture, urban design and planning. It was therefore logical that I found a welcome home within the inclusive discipline of Landscape Architecture.

I began my academic life studying International Tourism with foreign languages (French and Spanish). I specialized in urban tourism in European cities and focused my initial research interests on the impact that winter tourism has on the society and fragile mountain environment of the principality of Andorra and its capital city, Andorra la Vella. This marked the beginning of my growing interest in the influence that the political and physical context have on residents’ everyday life.

After years working in the private sector, I became increasingly restless to reawaken my academic interest in the socio-spatial context of urban settlements. In 2003, I returned to academia to embark on my PhD while working as Postgraduate Research Assistant & Project Manager on the CityForm-UK: Sustainable Urban Form Consortium project at Oxford Brookes University. CityForm-UK examined the impact that urban form (e.g. density, land use, urban layout and transport) has on social, economic and environmental sustainability. A large part of the fieldwork took place in Sheffield and so I spent the summer of 2005 walking the streets of the city with a clipboard! I fell for the place and returned to the south hoping to come back to Sheffield soon.

Following the successful completion of my PhD, I continued to work at Oxford Brookes as Postdoctoral Research Associate on the I’DGO: Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors project which focused my research interest on a specific aspect of urban form – the provision of outdoor space in high-density urban development – and its impact on older residents’ quality of life. This allowed me to look in detail at public, private and semi-private outdoor space and how its design, accessibility, maintenance and management influence people’s everyday lives. This paved the way for my return to Sheffield in 2009.

In 2009, I was fortunate enough to be taken on as Research Associate on the MP4: Making Places Profitable, Public and Private Open Spaces project in the Department of Landscape. This EU-funded project brings together European partners from the North Sea region to focus on the long-term management of open spaces, or place-keeping. This involves exploring innovative approaches to designing and managing an open space while securing its long-term future by getting the right people, funding, policies and evaluative processes in place.

Continued collaboration with CityForm-UK colleagues has led to the development of the CityForm-India international research network (2009 to date) which focuses on how sustainability might be achieved within the context of India’s rapidly growing cities.

I have been very lucky to live in a variety of urban and rural settings which have inspired me in different ways. I have watched the modern embrace of Manchester's strong Victorian legacy as the city in which I grew up continues to regenerate and transform. I lived as an outsider in the Albaicín, in Granada, Spain, where the World Heritage Site protection status has led to some parts crumbling as others thrive. I have been a commuter living in a dormitory village in rural Oxfordshire, holding up the traffic while chugging along to Oxford on my underpowered motorbike. I have been overwhelmed by the scale and vibrancy of some of India's cities and the sheer number of people. The country’s rural landscapes are vast and beautiful; yet they are difficult to appreciate fully given the extreme poverty that dominates the lives of many of India’s rural, and urban, residents. These and other experiences since help continue to develop my understanding of the urban-rural continuum and the variety of emerging social, economic, political and environmental contexts.

I successfully applied for the position of Lecturer in the Department, and began this full-time and permanent post in autumn 2011.

Research Interests

My research interests broadly relate to understanding the complex relationship between landscape and humans. They focus on sustainable landscape planning and management, in particular how urban and rural landscape planning and management affect everyday life, quality of life and wellbeing. I am also interested in different research theories and methods employed to understand the landscape and the associated perceptions held by residents and users in different contexts.

My doctoral research (2003-06) investigated the influence of the quality of the built environment on social cohesion in six English neighbourhoods. This work aimed to identify those features of quality in the built environment most likely to support social cohesion (Dempsey, 2008). It explored the contested spatial theory of environmental determinism (and other associated theories) within the broad context of UK policy and practice of building, planning, designing and maintaining ‘desirable’ urban landscapes (Dempsey, 2009). Part of the research involved the development of an innovative method of neighbourhood delineation, based on residents’ perceptions of where they live (Jenks and Dempsey, 2007). The thesis was shortlisted for the 2007 RIBA President’s Award for Research: Outstanding PhD Thesis.

My part in the EPSRC-funded CityForm-UK project (2003-07) allowed me to focus my research interest on how the physical (here, urban) form contributes to the sustainability of communities and aspects of social equity, specifically access to services and facilities in fifteen neighbourhoods in five UK cities (Dempsey et al, 2009; Bramley et al, 2009). This involved site surveys across the city, the design and administration of a national postal social survey and conducting in-depth focus groups with different resident groups.

The CityForm project has now gone international, with successful funding secured for CityForm-India (2009 to date). This is a UK-India research network which brings together international academics, policymakers and practitioners to examine sustainable urban form in India's rapidly growing cities (Raman and Dempsey, forthcoming; Dempsey and Raman, 2009). India is a challenging context for the investigation of sustainable planning and demands an understanding of a range of critical aspects. These include infrastructure provision, transport links, poverty, employment, culture, population growth and rapid urbanization. www.city-form.org

The I’DGO project (2007-09) provided valuable opportunities to develop research design skills, including mapping and social surveys, to explore the impact that high-density housing form and the accompanying green space (or lack thereof) has on older residents’ quality of life. The visual as well as physical access to open space is explored in this research, as the significance of the view quickly became apparent.

The MP4 project has called on my research interests in the quality of the physical environment and the influence that aspects of landscape management, design and planning have on residents’ and users’ everyday life and behavioural choices (Dempsey and Burton, in press). This has led to a number of ongoing collaborative projects with local partners, including Sheffield City Council and Green Estate, using different methods to measure perceptions and experiences in green spaces. http://mp4-interreg.eu/

These and other projects have provided me with a range of research techniques and skills which continue to challenge and develop how I approach my teaching and research.

Research supervision
I provide research supervision for postgraduate taught and research students.

I currently jointly supervise one PhD student who is examining local services and facilities and how they foster social interaction in suburban areas.

I have also been advisor to a number of students who have completed their PhDs whose subjects include: landscape management, sustainable urban development in developing countries, rapid urban development, urban density, public open space, community gardens, urban neighbourhoods and perception of place.

Areas of potential research degree supervision

Teaching Interests

My teaching, underpinned by my research interests, is focused primarily on sustainable landscape planning and research methods. I teach these at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

My aim is to help students develop an understanding of the multiple scales (e.g. site/ neighbourhood/ city/ region/ beyond), physical contexts (e.g. urban/ rural/ peri-urban) and non-physical contexts (e.g. social/ economic/ political) that are at play in the landscape. In this way, I believe students can develop the skills to engage in critical thinking and decision-making which reflect a holistic approach to understanding the landscape.

My other main teaching interest is in research methodology: how we understand, measure and evaluate the landscape and our perceptions and behaviour therein. Conducting research need not be a daunting process: I want to make research methods accessible and enjoyable. I do this by engaging students in live, real and innovative landscape planning research projects to help demystify the research process. The underlying aim here is to sustain and promote the teaching-research-practice relationship, with the hope that students will continue to engage in research-based practice in their professional lives.

My teaching is delivered in different ways including lectures, seminars and workshops; site visits; desk-based projects; and IT sessions – all of which are underpinned by a process of critical analysis.

Module coordinator:
Undergraduate
LSC 213 Techniques in Landscape 1 (Desk-based Techniques)

Modules to which I contribute:
Undergraduate
LSC 221 Sustainable Urban Environments
LSC 301 Environmental Assessment
LSC 313 Landscape Planning Project
Postgraduate
LSC 4120 Landscape Research Methods
LSC 5020 Rural Landscape Planning

Administrative responsibilities

Undergraduate personal tutor
Postgraduate personal tutor
Department staff-student committee