People

Sungkyung Lee is an Associate Professor in the College of Environment and Design at the University of Georgia.

She holds a Master of Landscape Architecture degree and a PhD degree in Landscape Architecture with a minor in Cultural Studies from the University of Illinois. Her research focuses on the intersections of urban landscapes, culture, identity, and sense of place. Particularly, she is interested in the issue of spatial identity related to the dramatic transformations of built and social environments (i.e., modernization, commercialization, war, and colonialization). Collectively, her research is centered on the questions of how such socio-economic and political contexts affect the built environment, influence the use and perception of a place, and contribute to creating a different human-environment relationship. Combining landscape research with theories from Cultural Studies, Human Geography, and other critical spatial disciplines, her interdisciplinary work provides insight into the ‘disturbed’ urban landscape by voicing up the perspectives of the inhabitants and their everyday landscape experiences.

Using sites in the U.S. and South Korea, her past and current research has dealt with the topical issues of collective landscape memories and the lived experience in the context of South Korea’s rapid modernization; community design and participation in low-income communities in the U.S.; urban redevelopment and the construction of the inauthentic sense of place; and the cross-cultural diffusion of public parks in the context of colonialism.