Niall Kirkwood is the Charles Eliot Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where since 1990 he has taught and carried out research on the planning, conservation and design of cultural and natural landscapes of Asia, SE Asia, Europe and North America. His research topics include the restoration and regeneration of landscapes disturbed by former industrial development and military activities, waste landfills and climate adaptation for large cities and coastal communities,
He is a longstanding faculty member of the Korea Institute of Harvard University the Cofounder and Joint Director of the Center for Brownfield Research at Tsinghua University, Beijing and has carried out teaching, consulting and research with Samsung EC, Lotte Inc, GS Development Company, Ulsan Metropolitan City, The City of Suwon, Gyeonggi Province- all Republic of Korea, The Muang Thai Company (MTI), Bangkok, Thailand, and The Wadia Group, Mumbai, India. His research, teaching and design projects have been published in LAND Journal- Land Planning and Landscape Architecture, Basel, Switzerland, Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, Springer, Nature Sustainability, Landscape Architecture Journal, China, Worldscape Journal, Environment and Landscape Architecture of Korea
He is an elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architecture, and an Honorary Fellow of the Kew Guild, Royal Gardens at Kew, England, United Kingdom. He held the position of Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University (2003-2009), the oldest such Department in the world founded in 1901 by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr, Program Director (1998-2003 and 2005-2008) and Advisor, Master of Design Studies Environment Track, (1999-2003).
Kirkwood has held Distinguished Visiting Professorships at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok Thailand, and was the William Allen Neilson Visiting Professor at Smith College. Northampton, Massachusetts.