Faculty Research Highlights
Nora Wendl publishes Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth
In May 2025, Associate Professor of Architecture Nora Wendl published Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth with The University of Illinois Press. Shortlisted for the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and praised as “lyrical, propulsive, and incredibly clear,” Almost Nothing examines the role of Edith Farnsworth in the creation of Mies van der Rohe’s iconic glass home. 
From the Press: “Nora Wendl’s audacious work of creative nonfiction explodes the sex-and-real-estate myth surrounding the Edith Farnsworth House and its two central figures. An eminent physician and woman of letters, Farnsworth left a rich trove of correspondence, memoirs, and photographs that Wendl uses to reconstruct her voice. Farnsworth’s memories and experiences alternate with Wendl’s thoughts on topics like misogyny and professional ambition to fashion a lyrical examination of love, loneliness, beauty, and the search for the divine.”
Wendl’s research and teaching subverts the received narratives that underpin architecture historiography by engaging feminist practices to create essays, books, installations, photographs, and films that offer new forms and frameworks for historicizing the built and unbuilt environment ( Faculty Profile).
Visit the University Illinois Press page for more.
Katya Crawford and Kathleen Kambic to publish The Design Competition in Landscape Architecture
The Design Competition in Landscape Architecture by Katya Crawford (Professor and Department Chair, Landscape Architecture) and Kathleen Kambic (Associate Professor, Landscape Architecture) will be published with the University of New Mexico Press in September 2025. Blending history, interviews, and case studies, The Design Competition is the first book to investigate the role of competitions in shaping the discipline of landscape architecture. 
From the Press: “Divided into five sections, the book provides an overview of the history and development of modern design competitions, includes interviews with world-renowned landscape architects and designers, offers a pedagogical approach to competition studios as part of a college curriculum, showcases award-winning designs from landscape architecture faculty and students (including built projects), and reflects on future directions for landscape architecture design competitions.”
Crawford’s research focuses on the ephemeral landscape and its power to engage and reveal social and environmental systems ( Faculty Profile). Kambic’s research interests include water infrastructure, marginalized urban space, feminist political ecology, and landscape design theory; she is also an affiliate with the Water Resource Program, the department of Georgraphy and Environmental Studies, and the Women, gender & Sexuality Studies Program at UNM ( Faculty Profile). Together with Ane Gonzalez Lara, Crawford and Kambic were awarded third place in the 2016 Hornachuelos International Design Competition and first place in the 2017 What’s Up Paris International Design Competition (both hosted by ReThinking Competitions).
Visit the UNM Press page for more.
Baker H. Morrow publishes The Horse on the Sidewalk
Baker H. Morrow, Professor of Practice in Landscape Architecture, has published The Horse on the Sidewalk with Casa Urraca Press in Abiquiú. Set in post-war Albuquerque and centered on the life of Gil Wheeler, The Horse on the Sidewalk has been celebrated as a series of stories that will “delight the reader with their minimalist precision, their eccentric humor, and the off-the-wall details of their no-bull realism.” 
From the Press: “Together, Gil and his friends navigate their just-built junior high and the desert landscape beyond their neighborhood—a new suburb that, much like their young lives, is brimming with both fresh possibility and the promise that not all dreams will come true.”
A professional landscape architect and founder of the firm Morrow Reardon Wilkinson Miller, Baker Morrow has been teaching at UNM since 1975. Morrow is author of eleven other books, including Best Plants for New Mexico Gardens and Landscapes (1995, revised edition, 2016) and Canyon Gardens: The Ancient Pueblo Landscapes of the American Southwest (with V.B. Price, 2008) ( Faculty Page)
Visit the Casa Urraca Press page for more.
Hancock co-authors article on Consensus Tables for Case Western Reserve Law Review
With co-author Jorge L. Contreras (University of Utah), Liane Hancock, Assistant Professor of Architecture, published an article “Consensus Tables” in the May 2025 issue of Case Western Reserve Law Review. The authors explore the development and use of consensus tables, or standardized contractual terms used by multiple parties operating within a single market segment, across different industries, and they outline criteria for developing successful consensus tables.
Liane Hancock’s scholarship and teaching explore building materials and construction methods; she is co-author of The Green Building Materials Manual - A Reference to Environmentally Sustainable Initiatives and Evaluation Methods (2021) and author of Perfect Concrete (2026) ( Faculty Profile).
Contreras, Jorge L., and Liane Hancock. "Consensus Templates." Case Western Reserve Law Review (2025).
Scruggs co-authors an article on agriculture and water security in the journal Agriculture
With five other UNM colleagues, Caroline Scruggs published “Perspectives on Innovative Approaches in Agriculture to Managing Water Security in the Middle Rio Grande Basin” in the April 2025 issue of the journal Agriculture. Drawing on interviews with stakeholders in the use and allocation of water in the Middle Rio Grande basin, the authors examined the incentives and the barriers to adopting innovative actions to managing water scarcity.
Professor Scruggs’ research and teaching focus on mixed method investigations of environmental problems, examining local issues that have global significance and conducting research that can inform policies around ecosystem and public health ( Faculty Profile).
Hasenbeck, Eleanor C., Caroline E. Scruggs, Melinda Morgan, Jingjing Wang, Alex J. Webster, and Corina M. Gomez. "Perspectives on Innovative Approaches in Agriculture to Managing Water Scarcity in the Middle Rio Grande Basin." Agriculture 15, no. 7 (2025): 793.
Ehrenfeucht publishes an article on incoherent convergent science in Ecology and Society
In March 2025, Renia Ehrenfeucht (Professor of Community and Regional Planning and SA+P Associate Dean of Research) co-authored the article “Towards an incoherent convergence science: diverse economies, crises, and recoveries, and the hope for better futures” in a special feature on Convergent Science for Sustainable Regional Systems for the journal Ecology and Society. With colleagues in Geography and Enviornmental Studies, Ehrenfeucht uses the recovery from the 2022 Hermits Peak Calf Canyon wildfires in Mora, NM to argue for a “incoherent convergence” approach to crises and disaster response, one that requires researchers to come together with other knowledge bearers and allows for epistemological plurality without assuming a singular understanding or shared worldview.
Professor Ehrenfeucht’s research and teaching is motivated by the belief that committed social action can dismantle colonialism and racism and create ways of living that respect diverse people and all species. Her research explores how people reshape built environments, especially by focusing on public spaces and the politics of everyday life, and how people, places and institutions respond to population loss ( Faculty Profile)
Montoya, Manuel R., Ehrenfeucht, Renia, Walsh-Dilley, Marygold, Warner, Ben P., & Tawse-Garcia, Cassidy A. (2025). Towards an incoherent convergence science: diverse economies, crises, and recoveries, and the hope for better futures. Ecology and Society, 30(1). https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-15810-300130
Scruggs co-authors two articles for Ecology and Society
In March 2025, Professor Caroline Scruggs (Community and Regional Planning) co-authored two articles in Ecology and Society. Written by an interdisciplinary group of UNM professors involved in research on the Santa Fe Watershed, many of whom are affiliated with the ARID institute, the articles focus on the possibilities and frictions of convergent research.
In "Facilitating convergence research on water resource management with a collaborative, adaptive, and multi-scale systems thinking framework,” Scruggs and her co-authors, including CRP Assistant Professor Lani Tsinnajinnie, analyze the use of Collaborative, Adaptive, and Multi-Scale (CAMS) systems thinking in their research team’s study of watersheds as a complex system. In "Fuzzy SETS: acknowledging multiple membership of elements within social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) theory," Scruggs and co-authors recognize the frictions of working within an interdisciplinary team, especially the “potentially messy, multi-membership calcification of elements” within social, ecological, and technological categories, and propose the use of “Fuzzy SETS conceptual framework” to recognize the epistemological diversity of convergent research and to probe deeper into the understanding of complex systems.
See Caroline Scruggs’ faculty profile here.
Webster, Alex J., Yolanda C. Lin, Caroline E. Scruggs, Rebecca J. Bixby, Laura J. Crossey, Kun Huang, Atlin Johnson et al. "Facilitating convergence research on water resource management with a collaborative, adaptive, and multi-scale systems thinking framework." Ecology and Society 30, no. 1 (2025).
Lin, Yolanda C., Alex J. Webster, Caroline E. Scruggs, Rebecca J. Bixby, Daniel Cadol, Laura J. Crossey, Patria de Lancer Julnes et al. "Fuzzy SETS: acknowledging multiple membership of elements within social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) theory." Ecology and Society 30, no. 1 (2025).
Scruggs publishes an overview of water reuse literature in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water (WIREs Water)
Along with Miriam Hacker (The Water Center at Penn), Caroline Scruggs published “A Review of Social and Organizational Barriers to Water Reuse in the United States” in the January 2025 issue of Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water. Scruggs and Hacker provide an overview of the literature on water reuse, which is becoming an increasing necessity in municipal and regional water planning. They conclude that existing work focuses on economic considerations of water reuse and regulatory and policy impacts, but there is a need for more research on other factors of impacting the adoption of water reuse, such as workforce and capacity building and equity implication.
See Caroline Scruggs’ faculty profile here.
Scruggs, Caroline E., and Miriam E. Hacker. "A Review of Social and Organizational Barriers to Water Reuse in the United States." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water 12, no. 1 (2025): e70009.
Uviña-Contreras co-authors an essay on the Embarrado Technique in the Journal of Traditional Building
In the November 2024 issue of the Journal of Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism, Francisco Uviña-Contreras published the article "La técnica vernácula del “embarrado” en San Pedro, Cuba" (“The Vernacular Embarrado Technique in San Pedro, Cuba”). With co-author Liysi Rojas Enrique, Uviña studied the embarrado earthen building technique that is used in several parts of Cuba. The authors reflect upon the continuity and revival of this technique in the community of San Pedro.
Francisco Uviña’s teaching and research focus on historic preservation, adaptive re-use design, and new design work utilizing traditional building methods ( Faculty Profile).
Contreras, Francisco Uviña, and Liyisi Rojas Enrique. "La técnica vernácula del “embarrado” en San Pedro, Cuba." Journal of Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism 5 (2024): 291-299.
Harris publishes a chapter in Transspecies Design
Associate Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture, Catherine P. Harris, published the essay “The Problem is the Burning House” in the edited volume Transpecies Design: Design for a Posthumanist World published by Routledge in July 2024. Harris challenges the “condor thought experiment” (in which a person is asked to choose between saving a baby human and a baby condor from a burning house) by proposing that the problem is the burning house: the conditions that precipitate species extinction. Bringing critical theory into conversation with landscape design typologies, Harris reflects on the role of anthropomorphism in creative placemaking and art projects that sit at the junction of human and non-human space.
Catherine Page Harris’s current research includes listening to indigenous landscape, developing 3D imaging of botanical resilience, and proposing urban posthuman places ( Faculty Profile).
Harris, Catherine Page. "The Problem Is the Burning House." In Transpecies Design, pp. 127-135. Routledge, 2024.
Scruggs publishes an article on “There is No Poop Fairy Campaign” in the Journal of Planning Education and Research
With co-authors from UNM, the Albuquerque Metropolitan Arroyo Flood Control Authority, and Bernalillo County Natural Resource Services, Professor Caroline Scruggs (Community and Regional Planning) published the article “Voluntary Public Campaigns to Benefit the Environment: Assessing the Effectiveness of the There is No Poop Fairy Campaign” in the June 2024 issue of the Journal of Planning Education and Research. Scruggs and her co-authors analyzed the effectiveness of the Albuquerque-based campaign to encourage dog owners to pick up their dogs’ waste to prevent water contamination of the Rio Grande. The first paper of its kind to study such an intervention, the authors make suggestions about how to balance competing desires of community members and make a novel contribution to the literature on interventions for pro-environmental behavior.
See Caroline Scruggs’ faculty profile here.
Scruggs, Caroline E., Sergio Lozoya, Kellin N. Rumsey, Kali Bronson, and Patrick Chavez. "Voluntary Public Campaigns to Benefit the Environment: Assessing the Effectiveness of the There Is No Poop Fairy Campaign." Journal of Planning Education and Research 44, no. 2 (2024): 808-821.
Iralu publishes two articles on Indigenous epistemologies
In 2024, Elspeth Iralu, Assistant Professor of Community and Regional Planning, published two articles that advocate for the use of storytelling and Indigenous epistemologies within scholarly practice: a research note “A Letter for Missing and Disappeared Archives” in the May issue of ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies and “Indigenous pedagogies of love: Theorizing nonscalable worlds” (co-authored with Dolly Kikon) in the October issue of Political Geography.
In “A Letter for Missing and Disappeared Archives,” Iralu weaves together personal reflections with historical events, contemplating a “history of the present.” From the abstract: “In this letter, Elspeth Iralu initiates a time-travelling correspondence with her paternal grandfather, Vichazelhu Iralu, about his dreams for the Naga sovereignty movement.” In “Indigenous pedagogies of love,” Iralu and Kikon use Naga storytelling as an alternative to metrics of development and explore forms of reciprocity and sociality that exists outside of the economic domain of expansion.
Iralu’s research focuses on Indigenous methodologies, Indigenous space, place, and mapping, as well as violence and visual culture ( Faculty Profile)
Iralu, Elspeth. ACME 23, no. 2 (2024): 161-165. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1111255ar
Iralu, Elspeth, and Dolly Kikon. "Indigenous pedagogies of love: Theorizing nonscalable worlds." Political Geography 114 (2024): 103184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103184
Tucker publishes an article on inclusive recycling in Development and Change
In April 2024, Jennifer Tucker (Associate Professor of Community and Regional Planning) published the article “Barriers to Inclusive Recycling in Asunción, Paraguay: A Just Transition?” in Development and Change. Using the informal recycling system in Asunción, Paraguay as a case study, Tucker examines the barriers that prevent successful integration of waste-pickers into urban waste infrastructure, and she argues that policy makers must pay attention to key organizational dynamics when making reforms.
Professor Tucker is a scholar of racial capitalism, urban inequality and struggles for social justice. Her research explores how places and practices construed as informal, illegal or lawless buttress networks of elite power and produce different kinds of urban spaces ( Faculty Profile).
Tucker, Jennifer L. "Barriers to Inclusive Recycling in Asunción, Paraguay: A Just Transition?." Development and Change 55, no. 2 (2024): 276-301.
Scruggs publishes an article on Net Zero Water Future in ACS ES&T Water
In April 2024, Caroline Scruggs co-authored “Advancing a Net Zero Urban Water Future in the United States Southwest: Governance and Policy Challenges and Future Needs” in the journal ACS ES&T Water. The article examines the hurdles to adopting a net zero urban water (NZUW) approach in the Southwest region and recommends five governance and policy changes to provide locally available and sustainable water supply in four urban areas, including Albuquerque, NM.
See Caroline Scruggs’ faculty profile here.
Crosson, Courtney, Stephanie Pincetl, Caroline Scruggs, Neha Gupta, Rashi Bhushan, Sybil Sharvelle, Erik Porse et al. "Advancing a Net Zero Urban Water Future in the United States Southwest: Governance and Policy Challenges and Future Needs." ACS ES&T Water 4, no. 5 (2024): 1966-1977.
Ehrenfeucht publishes in Climate and Development
In March 2024, Professor Renia Ehrenfeucht (Community and Regional Planning) co-authored the article “Managing retreat? An empirical reflection on adopting relocation initiatives as adaption policy in Louisiana” in the journal Climate and Development. By analyzing planning documents and conducting interviews with residents and planning professionals in Louisiana, Ehrenfeucht and her co-authors found that the state’s planning goals for relocation have weakened over time, despite increasing risk of climate-related impacts and they argue that large-scale relocation planning requires a better understanding of the challenges facing affected communities.
See Professor Ehrenfeucht’s faculty page here.
Birch, Traci, Marla Nelson, and Renia Ehrenfeucht. "Managing retreat? An empirical reflection on adopting relocation initiatives as adaptation policy in Louisiana." Climate and Development 16, no. 8 (2024): 712-721. https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2024.2312815
Tucker publishes an article in Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space
With co-author Thainara Granero de Melo, Professor Jennifer Tucker (Community and Regional Planning) published the paper “Marielle’s seeds: Contesting the emotional life of corruption talk in Bolsonaro's Brazil” in the March 2024 issue of Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. Tucker and Granero de Melo argue that talk of corruption in Brazil is “pervasive, contested, racialized, and emotional.” Identifying two competing narratives of corruption, the authors conclude that the extreme Right has mobilized corruption talk in the service of necropolitics.
See Jennifer Tucker’s faculty profile here.
Tucker, Jennifer L., and Thainara Granero de Melo. "Marielle’s seeds: Contesting the emotional life of corruption talk in Bolsonaro’s Brazil." Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 42, no. 4 (2024): 544-562.
Scruggs publishes a response to “Novel contaminants, novel solutions” in One Earth
In March 2024, Caroline Scruggs (Professor of Community and Regional Planning) contributed to a “Voices” feature entitled “Novel contaminants, novel solutions” in the journal One Earth. Responding to the prompt: “what are the novel contaminants, and the novel solutions, for clean water?,” Scruggs discussed the prevalence of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in reused water and advocated for improved regulations to chemical manufacturers to ensure the safety of their products before they are placed on the market.
See Caroline Scruggs’ faculty profile here.
Scruggs, Caroline, Show Pau Loke, Yongli Wager, Bing-Jie Ni, Kelly Thornber, Joseph Falkinham, Kyle Bibby, Ana Rita Lado Ribeiro, Junhu Zhou, and John XJ Zhang. "Novel contaminants, novel solutions." One Earth 7, no. 3 (2024): 374-378.
Castillo co-authors an article in the International Journal of Deigns for Learning
With an interdisciplinary team of UNM colleagues and graduate students, Professor Tim Castillo (Architecture) published the essay “Entangled Co-Design with a Trickster: Speculative Framing and Reframing,” in the 2024 issue of the International Journal of Designs for Learning. Treating COVID-19 as a “trickster,” Castillo and his co-authors analyzed how the pandemic revealed the institutional and systemic limitations of their attempts at creating interdisciplinary design education in the place-based project The Aquifer in Santa Fe and how speculative design methods helped the team to reframe the problem.
Tim Castillo is the Director of Community Engagement Initiatives at UNM and a Professor of Architecture. In his research and teaching, Castillo pursues new pedagogies that explore applications related to emerging digital technologies and innovation ( Faculty Profile).
Svihla, Vanessa, Megan Jacobs, Tim Castillo, Mary Tsiongas, Leah Buechley, Megan Tucker, Amy Traylor et al. "Entangled Co-Design with a Trickster: Speculative Framing and Reframing." International Journal of Designs for Learning 15, no. 1 (2024)
Bunt publishes chapter on design thinking in the International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition
Assistant Professor of Architecture Stephanie Bunt co-authored the chapter “Optimization in Parametric Design Thinking: Are New Models Needed?” for the January 2024 publication of the International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition. Bunt and her co-authors studied the historical development of design thinking in response to progressions in technology and analyzed the contemporary use of parametric tools, proposing areas of future research for design tools in automation.
Stephanie Bunt’s research and reaching focuses on characterizing, evaluating, and improving the multi-disciplinary design education of architects and engineers ( Faculty Profile)
Bunt, Stephanie, Catherine GP Berdanier, and Nathan C. Brown. "Optimization in Parametric Design Thinking: Are New Models Needed?." In International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition, pp. 37-51. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2024
Tucker publishes Outlaw Capital: Everyday Illegalities and the Making of Uneven Development with University of Georgia Press
Jennifer Tucker, Associate Professor of Community and Regional Planning, published her first book, Outlaw Capital: Everyday Illegalities and the Making of Uneven Development, with the University of Georgia Press in September 2023. Praised as a “riveting and beautifully rendered ethnography” and a “massive contribution to critical corruption studies and the political economy of racial capitalism,” Outlaw Capital examines the contraband economy of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, which is a key site on the China-Paraguay-Brazil trade route. 
From the Press: “ Outlaw Capital [shows] how uneven development and the Paraguayan state made Ciudad de Este a gray space of profitable transgression. By studying the everyday illegalities of both elite traders and ordinary workers, Jennifer L. Tucker shows how racialized narratives of economic legitimacy across scales—not legal compliance—sort whose activities count as formal and legal and whose are targeted for reform or expulsion.”
Professor Tucker is a scholar of racial capitalism, urban inequality and struggles for social justice. Her research explores how places and practices construed as informal, illegal or lawless buttress networks of elite power and produce different kinds of urban spaces ( Faculty Profile).
See Press page here.
Ehrenfeucht publishes on climate relocation initiatives in the Journal of Planning Literature
With Marla Nelson (University of New Orleans), Renia Ehrenfeucht (Professor of Community and Regional Studies and SA+P Associate Director of Research) published “Towards Transformative Climate Relocation Initiatives” in the August 2023 issue of the Journal of Planning Literature. Ehrenfeucht and Nelson examine how adaptive relocation policy can facilitate community-led opportunities for communities of color and those with lower income, and they offer considerations for designing relocation initiatives that will lead to outcomes that improve people’s well-being.
See Professor Ehrenfeucht’s faculty page here.
Renia Ehrenfeucht and Marla Nelson, 2023, Towards Transformative Climate Relocation Initiatives. Journal of Planning Literature, 38(3) https://doi.org/10.1177/08854122221130287
Tucker publishes a symposium on labor in Antipode
In July 2023, Associate Professor Jennifer Tucker (Community and Regional Planning) co-authored a symposium entitled “Outside the Wage: Seeing Politics and Possibilities with Critical Comparisons,” in the journal Antipode. The symposium engaged in debates on the contemporary reconfiguration of work and the shifting understandings of the relationship among and between waged, unwaged, and reproductive labor.
See Jennifer Tucker’s faculty profile here.
Tucker, Jennifer L., Aman Luthra, and Christian Anderson. "Outside the Wage: Seeing Politics and Possibilities with Critical Comparisons." Antipode 55, no. 4 (2023): 989-1003.
Scruggs publishes an article on potable water re-use in AWWA Water Science
In March 2023, Professor Caroline Scruggs (Community and Regional Planning) co-authored the article “Understanding questions and concerns about potable water reuse: An analysis of survey write-in responses” in the journal AWWA Water Science. Using data from a large public survey with write-in responses, Scruggs and her colleagues analyzed the questions and concerns around potable water reuse amongst Albuquerque residents.
See Caroline Scruggs’ faculty profile here.
Scruggs, Caroline E., Catherine M. Heyne, and Kellin N. Rumsey. "Understanding questions and concerns about potable water reuse: An analysis of survey write‐in responses." AWWA water science 5, no. 2 (2023): e1333.
Crawford publishes article in LA+: Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture
Katya Crawford (Professor, Landscape Architecture) published the essay “Let’s Smoke, Walk, and Enter Competitions,” in the Spring 2023 issue of LA+: Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture, themed “interruption.” In this essay, Crawford muses on the excitement and promise that is borne out of design competitions, and she argues for the central role that competitions have played in the realization of groundbreaking landscape architecture projects.
See Katya Crawford’s faculty profile here.
Crawford, Katya. "LET’S SMOKE, WALK, AND ENTER COMPETITIONS." LA+: Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture 17 (2023)
