Dr. Desiree Valadares

Desiree Valadares is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and a faculty affiliate in Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies at the University of British Columbia-Vancouver. Her research, writing, and photography explore the cultural memory and heritage politics of Pacific War landscapes in western Canada, southeast Alaska and Hawaiʻi. Her interdisciplinary scholarship and creative practice engages geography and cultural landscape studies, architectural history, Asian American studies, and preservation. Her research and creative work are supported by the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Canada Council for the Arts, Social Science Research Council (SSRC), Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Her published works appear in Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal, Aggregate: Architectural History Collaborative, Radical History Review, Change over Time: An International Journal of Conservation and the Built Environment, The Funambulist, and her editorial contributions are featured in the Journal for the Society of Architectural Historians, and The Avery Review.

RCC Project: Unlikely Antiquities: Pacific War as Public Lands (PDF, 82 KB)

Selected Publications:

• “Preserving Particulates: Containing Infrastructure and Fomenting Fermentation on the Alaska Highway.” Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal 57 (2026): 19–34. https://doi.org/10.1162/PSCT.a.3.
• with Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Neelima Jeychandran and Alexander Murphy. “Transits: Theorizing Transits: Im/mobility, Im/materiality, Im/permanence.” In Verge Global Asias: Tactics and Theories for a Global Asias Praxis, edited by Tina Chen and Charlotte Eubanks. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.14203764.6.
• “Thinking Like a Gulch: Pacific War Heritage, Settler Lands and Toxic Uncertainties in O‘ahu.” Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative: Toxics Project (2023). https://doi.org/10.53965/BJTM8353.
• “Uneven Mobilities: Infrastructural Imaginaries on the Hope-Princeton Highway.” Radical History Review 147 (2023): 158–85. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-10637232.
• “Conjuring the Commons: National Monuments as Technical Lands.” In Technical Lands: A Critical Primer, edited by Charles Waldheim and Jeffrey Nesbit. JOVIS Verlag, 2022.