Erin Putalik is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Landscape Architecture and Architecture at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on sites and materials in their processes of change—from large-scale landscape change to microscopic material degradation—and examines the impacts of these changes on the lives and daily practices of those living with these sites and materials. She is currently working on a book exploring field-based landscape design methods and citizen-driven conservation practices in the early twentieth century, told through the fifty-year professional life of landscape architect Genevieve Gillette.