Doing a PhD

View of the Privy Garden. Copyright Historic Royal Palaces

Speaker: David Jacques

The speaker’s background and his motivation to carry out a research degree will be explained. Then the question of whether it has helped advance his career, and in what ways, is discussed. Last, the speaker addresses some ‘it would be better if’ questions, particularly the standards required in research degrees and the desirability of research academics being required to have experience in practice.

Dr David Jacques, OBE, studied engineering, landscape architecture and town and country planning. After 14 years in consultancy practices he became the first Inspector of Historic Parks and Gardens at English Heritage, setting up and running grant schemes for the repair of storm damage. Alongside he was a frequently published garden historian and became prominent in the rise of Cultural Landscapes 1990-1998. On leaving English Heritage he went into private practice, e.g. restoring the Privy Garden at Hampton Court, undertook his PhD at the Courtauld Institute 1994-9, taught part-time at York and served as Chairman of the Garden History Society. In the early 2000s he ran the MA in Landscape Conservation at the Architectural Association, and was an active trustee of Chiswick House and Gardens. He began writing again and from 2009 he has published 7 books. He served on the World Heritage Panel in 2000 and 2002. He is currently writing a book on Landscape Aesthetics for Routledge.