Dorothée Imbert chairs the Master of Landscape Architecture program and is professor in the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, where she teaches design and history/theory courses. She has carried out extensive research on landscape modernism with an emphasis on Europe and California, leading to the books Between Garden and City: Landscape Modernism and Jean Canneel-Claes (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), The Modernist Garden in France (Yale University Press, 1993), and Garrett Eckbo: Modern Landscapes for Living (with Marc Treib, University of California Press, 1996, 2005). She has also published numerous essays and articles in scholarly and design journals, including the Journal of Landscape Architecture, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, and Topos. Her recent writing and design investigations have focused on urban agriculture, with an essay in the volume Ecological Urbanism, articles in the Harvard Design Magazine and Architecture Boston, and a proposal for farms in the new Allston campus of Harvard University. Imbert has lectured widely in the United States and abroad and has organized several conferences and exhibitions, including Constructing the Swiss Landscape, Territories: Contemporary European Landscape Design, and Garrett Eckbo: Modern Landscapes for Living.

Imbert received her architect's diploma in Paris, and holds an MArch and MLA from the University of California, Berkeley. She practiced landscape architecture at Peter Walker and Partners from 1996 until 1999, and subsequently taught at Harvard University for ten years before joining the faculty at Washington University.