Rethinking the common in the Anthropocene
What happens to shared landscapes in the Anthropocene? Overstreet and Sørensen’s prize-winning paper explores how encounters with changing environments challenge conventional ideas of the common and invite new ecological relationships.
The 2025 Best Paper by an Early Career Researcher Prize recognises a paper that reconsiders how shared landscapes are understood in a time of ecological uncertainty. In Unnaming the common: landscape encounters in the anthropocene, K. Overstreet and T. F. Sørensen explore how encounters with contemporary landscapes challenge conventional ideas of common space and invite new ways of thinking about ecological relationships.
Published in Landscape Research, the paper examines how the Anthropocene disrupts familiar assumptions about shared environments. Rather than treating landscapes as stable or collectively agreed spaces, Overstreet and Sørensen consider how encounters with changing, contested and more-than-human environments reshape what “the common” might mean.
Why this paper stood out
The paper stood out for its thoughtful engagement with landscape experience and its careful reworking of the idea of the commons. Instead of focusing on ownership, access or governance alone, Overstreet and Sørensen examine how the common emerges through encounters — moments in which people, environments and non-human actors meet in unpredictable ways.
This perspective shifts attention from fixed definitions of shared space to relational processes. Landscapes are understood as dynamic and contingent, shaped by ecological change, human intervention and evolving cultural meanings.
The contribution
Overstreet and Sørensen propose “unnaming” the common as a way of resisting rigid categorisation. By loosening the terminology around shared landscapes, the paper opens space for new interpretations of how ecological relationships are formed and negotiated.
Through this approach, the authors highlight:
- landscape encounters as generative moments of shared experience
- the Anthropocene as a context that destabilises conventional commons
- more-than-human relationships within shared environments
the importance of ambiguity and openness in defining common space
This conceptual contribution expands discussions of the commons within landscape research and connects philosophical inquiry with lived landscape experience.
Implications for landscape research
The paper offers a valuable perspective for contemporary landscape scholarship, particularly in relation to environmental change and shared responsibility. By emphasising encounter and relationality, Overstreet and Sørensen provide a framework that supports new ways of thinking about collective landscapes in uncertain conditions.
This work complements the broader themes recognised across this year’s prize winners, extending interdisciplinary landscape research into questions of common space, ecological relationships and more-than-human coexistence.
Editorial citation
Hannes Palang, Editor-in-Chief of Landscape Research, commented:
“Overstreet and Sørensen offer a thoughtful and original contribution to discussions of the commons in landscape research. By focusing on encounter and relationality in the Anthropocene, the paper opens new ways of thinking about shared environments and ecological responsibility.”
About the award
The Best Paper by an Early Career Researcher Prize recognises outstanding contributions to Landscape Research by emerging scholars. The award highlights innovative work that advances landscape research through conceptual clarity, originality and interdisciplinary reach. Explore this year’s winner and previous recipients:
Best Paper by an Early Career Researcher:
https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/clar20/collections/best-paper-prize-early-career-landscape-research
Read the 2025 Best Paper Prize joint winners:
Katherine Burlingame — Landscape as method
Weisser and Hauck — Animal-Aided Design
Best Paper Prize past and present:
https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/clar20/collections/best-paper-prize-landscape-research