The future of Landscape Biography

Abstract

Landscape biography began as an innovative approach that tells a landscape’s layered ‘life story’ and how it evolved through an ongoing interaction between humans and their environment in the 20th century. Although Landscape Biography became influential in the Netherlands, scholars in other countries analysed landscapes, cities, or even industrial ensembles similarly, using different names and tools. During the double session at the PECSRL 2024 conference in Poland and the Lorentz workshop in the Netherlands in the same year, the discussions on the future of landscape biography resulted in a list of new themes and attention towards a methodological approach. During both meetings, there was an overriding consensus that an expansion of Landscape Biography’s conceptual and geographical boundaries was crucial—both as a methodology and in practice—to ensure that it remains a valuable tool PECSRL2026 – Ghent & Spa 75 for addressing pressing contemporary issues, including the “wicked problems” of climate change, renewable energy, biodiversity, discussions on how and the increasing recognition of non-human agents in shaping landscapes and addressing multivocality in cases of trauma and contested opinions. Understanding how the concept can be adapted on a wider international scale is essential to allow it to grow and develop its practical relevance, building on its solid Dutch roots to wider Europe and beyond, in which its application to diverse regions facing additional challenges such as dispossession, decolonisation, and conflict can be explored and addressed. In this paper, the authors of the session will summarise the main outcomes as a conclusion on how landscape biography can be developed for the future.