After a fruitful search, Buildings & Landscapes: The Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum is pleased to announce two new members of its editorial team: Rachel Leibowitz and Michael J. Chiarappa. Michael will replace Carl Lounsbury beginning next spring as the journal's co-editor, to serve with Lydia Mattice Brandt. Rachel will step in for our current book review editors, Andrew Johnston and Jessica Ellen Sewell, next spring. Thank you to Lydia Mattice Brandt, Claire Dempsey, Cynthia Falk, and Brian Goldstein for serving on the editorial search committee.

Michael J. Chiarappa received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and is Professor of History at Quinnipiac University. He is co-author of Fish for All: An Oral History of Multiple Claims and Divided Sentiment on Lake Michigan (2003), co-editor of Nature’s Entrepot: Philadelphia’s Urban Sphere and its Environmental Thresholds (2012) and the author of articles focusing on vernacular architecture and landscapes, and marine environmental history. A graduate of the Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies, he has worked with museums and government agencies on maritime-related programming, including the Bayshore Center at Bivalve, the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Park Service. A former board member of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, he serves on the editorial board of Buildings & Landscapes.

Rachel Leibowitz is an assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and a co-director of its Center for Cultural Landscape Preservation. Her current research projects examine the popularity of “the Japanese style” in midcentury residential design, the development of Chicago’s water filtration plants, and “the Lincoln elm” planted at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois. Before relocating to Syracuse in 2018, Rachel served for five years as the Division Head of the Illinois State Historic Preservation Office and Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer. She has taught courses in the history of architecture and landscape architecture at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She currently serves on the board of the Preservation Association of Central New York and is a past board member of both the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation and the Vernacular Architecture Forum.