Diamond’s work focuses on histories of spatialized inequity and action-research as a basis for systems change in the contemporary world. As an interdisciplinary scholar, she draws on an early career in applied architectural and landscape design as well as scholarly frameworks from environmental history, geography, plant humanities, urban planning, and ethnic studies.

Her historical research focuses on racial capitalism and spatial development, probing how social hierarchies have been produced through city-building practices and structures, and how these uneven processes of extraction reach into the present. Her work makes visible the processes and histories of racialized extraction, and explores material, ecological, and social entanglements across time and space to recover possibilities for worlding beyond extractive capitalism.

Her future-facing work focuses on historically-informed and community-driven research for intervention in current institutional systems. In this part of her research, she works across various dimensions. First, her work assesses current institutional frameworks through the lens of equity, and aims to build institutional structures that center action-research for institutional accountability and redistribution of power and knowledge. Her work also combines historical examination and critical ethnic studies frameworks with contemporary technologies to build ethical tools for redistribution of power and resources.  Finally, she draws on her background as a landscape architect and artist to develop methods for engaging art, making, and design to build solidarities and shared historical understandings of place and people.

• PhD in the Constructed Environment, School of Architecture, University of Virginia
• MLA, School of Architecture, University of Virginia
  
• BSArch, School of Architecture, University of Virginia

Research Awards and Fellowships

• Finalist for McHarg Center Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Pennsylvania
• Mellon Summer Fellow in Urban Humanities at Dumbarton Oaks
• University of Virginia Center for Cultural Landscapes Sara Shallenberger Brown Research Fellow
• Governor’s Fellowship Recipient University of Virginia
  

Teaching-Related Awards

• All-University Graduate Teaching Award, University of Virginia
• VA APA Honorable Mention, Falls Church Public Art Policy
  Drafted by students in Profs. Diamond and Wilson’s Practicum (PLAN 6090) class

Design and Professional Awards

• ASLA Honor Award, General Design: Duke University Water Reclamation Pond, Nelson Byrd Woltz
  
• ULI Nashville Open Space Award: Centennial Park Phase I Nashville, TN, Nelson Byrd Woltz
  
• ASLA Honor Award: Memorial Park Master Plan Houston, TX, Nelson Byrd Woltz
• ASLA Honor Award for Analysis and Planning: Rockefeller Park Strategic Master Plan Cleveland, OH Siteworks Studio
  
• UVA Helen and Stanley Abbott Award for Design Excellence, University of Virginia
• Virginia Chapter ASLA Student Certificate of Honor
  
• St. Louis Chapter AIA Honor Award: Emerson Corporate HQ Auditorium Renovations, Fox Architects
• Department of Architecture Award for Excellence in Design
  University of Virginia