David Stea
Texas State University, San Marcos, USA
David Stea received a B.S. in Mechanical/Aeronautical Engineering from Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1957 and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University in1964. As Carnegie Interdisciplinary Fellow at Brown University, he developed the new field of Environmental Psychology and the related study of spatial and geographic cognition. He was Associate Professor of Psychology and Geography at Clark University, Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at UCLA through 1988, and then Distinguished Professor of Architecture at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Stea has held four distinguished professorships in the U.S.A., Indonesia, and Mexico
He is a member of the editorial boards of a number of journals, the co-author or co-editor of several books, including Image and Environment, Landscape in Language, and Maps in Minds, and some 150 articles.
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Dr. Stea has given some 200 lectures and presentations in a dozen countries around the globe and has been visiting professor and planning consultant on all inhabited continents.
In the mid-1980s, Dr. David Canter and Dr. Stea began editing the “Ethnoscapes” book series in the U.K. In 1987 he was nominated for the Right Livelihood Prize (also known as the “alternative Nobel”). Later with a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Dr. Stea established and directed the International Center for Culture and Environment in Santa Fe, New Mexico, training environmental specialists in for international practice, and continued its work in Mexico.
In 2008 he was named Distinguished Visitor by the City of Veracruz and also received citations from Mexico and France for his pioneering work in relating environmental psychology to environmental design.
Dr. Stea is now Professor Emeritus of Geography and International Studies at Texas State University and Research Associate with the Center for Global Justice in Mexico. Since becoming Professor Emeritus in 2006, he has continued research in central Mexico and in the Navajo Nation in the USA.
Professor García Mira, on behalf of IAPS board, delivers the Diploma of Hall of Fame to Professor David Stea during the Opening Ceremony of the EDRA conference in Veracruz in 2008. Professor Patricia Ortega attended this session too.