Session Organisers: Rients de Boer1, Maaike de Waal2, Emily Shakespeare3, Karin Stadhouders1,
Gerdy Verschuure-Stuip4
(1) LDE Centre for Global Heritage and Development, Leiden, The Netherlands
(2) Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, The Netherlands
(3) SABRE Research Centre, Dept Architecture & Built Environment, South East Technological University, Ireland
(4) Faculty Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Session description
A Landscape Biography tells a landscape’s layered ‘life story’, how it has evolved over time in an ongoing interaction between humans, non-humans and their environment. It is an integrated and holistic approach to landscapes which aims to transcend traditional divisions between disciplines and period specialisations.
Conceived as an approach by Marwyn Samuels in 1979 and further developed from the 1990s onwards (inter alia, Kolen & Renes, 2015; Kolen et al., 2018; Roymans et al, 2009), it has been increasingly used in the practice of spatial development and design, to provide a solid and coherent knowledge base for future-oriented policies. Most notably applied in the Netherlands, it facilitates a transdisciplinary, integrated and participatory approach to spatial and environmental policies. A recent body of research has been carried out in other countries such as Ireland, Haiti, Denmark and New Zealand, and this session would welcome applications from all regions from a theoretical and a practical application and approach.
This session follows on from a workshop held in the Lorentz Center, Leiden in March 2023 entitled, Landscape Biography: A Way Forward. This comprised of an international group whose aim was to take a fresh review and assessment of the concept to ensure its adequacy and relevance to today’s societal and environmental challenges. They sought to develop and push beyond Landscape Biography’s traditional conceptual boundaries, both as a methodology and in practice to address some of the topical issues of our time, not least the “wicked problem” of climate change, renewable energy, biodiversity, and consideration to non-human landscape authors.
The outcomes of the workshop are being synthesised into accessible guidelines for future scholars and practitioners to allow for a practical and cohesive approach going forward, together with an increased awareness of the viability and existence of the concept, and the organisers would welcome any new perspectives that push the traditional geographical and conceptual boundaries of landscape biography.
The session will comprise of some invited speakers as participants of this workshop as well as welcoming other submissions from all and any disciplines and locations, particularly those that push and challenge the boundaries of the landscape biographical concept into innovative areas such as:
– future-oriented research themes related to major societal challenges of climate change, renewable energy, biodiversity and the extraction of raw materials
– the use of technology in partnership with the landscape biographical concept
– more-than-human landscape authors in search of a less anthropocentric approach
– diversity and inclusion, most notably sociocultural diversity and gender balance
– dealing with burdensome or conflicting (traumatic or otherwise confronting) landscapes like postcolonial landscapes.
