Mariia Ermilova

Mariia Ermilova holds a doctoral degree in Agriculture from Isami Kinoshita Spatial Planning Laboratory, Chiba University Graduate School of Horticulture, Matsudo, Japan. Her study took the form of Community-Based Participatory Action Research in the Japanese town of Iwase, resulting in the creation of gardens and art installations in the area. Mariia performs the role of Japanese Neighbourhood Association (Jichikai) building and project manager with her husband since March 2016. With the group of citizens and students from Kinoshita lab, Mariia explored how landscape, community design, and sustainability issues could be addressed on the local scale, using plants and animals as stimulators for communication between area residents and guests. Mariia particularly interested in intercultural and intergenerational communication, ways of traditional environmental knowledge contemporary existence, and transmission. She also researches folk crafts as biocultural diversity manifestations. Mariia is a life-long sketcher, keeping journals with drawings and notes of the events she observes through her daily life. She is an active member of Urban Sketchers since 2015.

My most recent project was creating 100 Nature Diary entries. I committed to observing local nature under COVID-19 lockdown, looking for comfort and joy in nature observation. I was sketching and writing about the plants and landscapes of Iwase (Matsudo).