Amalia Leifeste is an associate professor and serves as the Venerable Chair of Historic Preservation directing the University of Oregon Historic Preservation (UO HP) program.
Amalia Leifeste is a preservation architect who brings that disciplinary background, as well as educational training in sustainable design and historic preservation, to the rich medley of faculty in the graduate program. She holds degrees from the University of Oregon (B.Arch) and University of Texas in Austin (M.Arch + certificates in Historic Preservation and Sustainable Design).
As a full-time professor Leifeste teaches courses, oversees student capstone projects, advocates for students in their student experience and professional careers, administers the program, and conducts her own academic and project-based research.
Amalia’s research agenda revolves around fostering a sustainable building culture and sees preservation practice as essential to any serious view of sustainability.
In research and through her teaching role she is interested in:
- Community engagement in preservation processes
- Documentation of historic places
- History of building construction
- How we educate preservation practitioners
- How place fosters group identity
- Defining how much and what kind of change can keep buildings useful for current needs without erasing essential touchstones of meaning for people who care about their historic places [including adaptive reuse]
