A Personal Reflection on People as “Subjects” for Built Environment Research

As a historian of the built environment, I began talking to people “in the field” almost twenty years ago, when researching my master’s thesis at the University of California Berkeley. Human stories and experiences have been a critical source of primary evidence in my research since that time, and I continue to seek clarity and resolve about my own research methods. Here, I offer questions and reflections on my working process, as well as thoughts about how our discipline can further refine methods for engaging humans in built environment research. While my methods are not unique, I have developed working strategies from the ground up through the mistakes, awkward encounters, and surprising rewards that occur in the field. As a scholar who engages with living subjects, I am not only learning the terms of such engagement but also who I am as a subject in a shared field.