Desiree Valadares is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Geography and a Faculty Affiliate in the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program. She is trained as a landscape architect and an architectural historian. She writes about land, territoriality, and empire in Canada and the non-contiguous US. Her current book project, Carceral Conversions, focuses on the aftermath of former Second World War incarceration landscapes and their designation as national heritage sites in the Indigenous Pacific.