Professor Thomas Visser has long held a keen interest in history and historic preservation. Born in Boston, his family moved from Beacon Hill to rural New Hampshire where Tom attended grade school in Moultonborough and high school in Wolfeboro. He studied chemistry, history, art and business administration at the University of New Hampshire. He also took courses at the College of Environmental Design at University of California, Berkeley and at the University of Montreal. His terminal MS degree in Historic Preservation is from the University of Vermont, where he has researched and taught since 1986 and has directed the UVM Historic Preservation Program since 1994. The recipient of a major National Endowment for the Arts Design Arts award, his first book, Field Guide to New England Barns and Farm Buildings received a national award and has sold over 12,000 copies. His second book, Porches of North America, was based on field research across the United States and Canada and scholarly research at the University of Vermont and at McGill University where his partner lives in Montreal. He has completed over a hundred field studies, national register nominations and professional research reports on heritage sites and museums across New England and beyond. Thomas Visser also serves as an Approved Assessor museum consultant through the Collection Assessment for Preservation (CAP) program of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) in Washington, DC. He also has made over 189 invited scholarly presentations on preservation and history topics in the US and Canada. Recent research has focused on memory landscapes, urban sketching and critical heritage studies in the US, Canada, Latin America and Europe.