Doing a PhD
Speaker: Charlotte McLean
Charlotte embarked on her PhD journey in 2019, completing it in October 2024. Her PhD was based at Manchester Metropolitan University although conducted from her home in Scotland where the Mark Turnbull archive was based. This necessitated a ten hour weekly commute and overnight stay in Manchester and, in hindsight, put her at a considerable disadvantage from her contemporaries. However, six months in, the whole world entered uncharted territory with Covid 19 heralding a series of lockdowns and the closure of libraries. Suddenly all students were in the same boat, conducting research from afar best they could with Zoom and Teams meetings becoming a part of everyday life.
In between lockdowns, her research took her to America where she was fortunate to spend six days in the Architectural Archives of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania studying regional mapping projects undertaken by students of Ian McHarg (author of Design with Nature, 1969).
For this talk, she will recount the story of her PhD, its background, the highs and lows, pros and cons, interspersed with some ‘juicy bits,’ and where she is now on her research journey.
Dr Charlotte L McLean is a chartered landscape architect with over 30 years’ experience in landscape design, planning and conservation. She has enjoyed a wide-ranging career, with extensive experience in the private sector and on the planning side in local government (Historic England). Much of her work has involved the conservation and management of designed historic landscapes or design interventions to give them new use and resonance. She has worked in Italy, France, Germany and Australia.
In October 2024 she gained a PhD in Architecture at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her thesis examines an under-researched period of landscape architectural history in Britain, through analysis of the archive of Scottish landscape architect Mark Turnbull (1943 – 2016) and positions landscape as a critical agent of cultural change in post-1945 Scotland.
Since 2015 she has undertaken a considerable amount of local volunteer work including preparation of a Local Place Plan and is currently trying to secure funding to preserve a local history collection. In 2025 she became a trustee of the Landscape Research Group.