The Landscape Research Group (LRG) is pleased to announce our 2020 Research Fund. The 50th Anniversary Research Fund was created in 2017, and it is our plan to continue with an annual Research Fund to support a small number of high-quality projects which align strongly with LRG’s current strategic priorities, as outlined in our Research Strategy and specified below.
We particularly welcome applications from early career researchers and practitioners in any field of landscape, and projects with a strong element of collaboration and exchange.
Download full details, eligibility criteria and application form here (Word document).
Deadline for applications is 8th March 2020.
View previous funded projects here.
2020 Research Fund Theme:
Critical and Creative Approaches to Landscape Justice and Rapid Environmental Change
This year’s call links the fourth topic of the LRG Research Strategy, critical and creative landscape thinking, with the second one – rapid environmental change, under the general context of landscape justice.
In the LRG’s Research Strategy landscape justice is concerned with issues of access and exclusion, ownership and dispossession, connection and disconnection within and across communities, societies, generations and species. It considers place but also transcends location to think more abstractly about how human and non-human stakeholders engage with notions of equity and justice. It concerns the complexities of decision-making power and disenfranchisement, and fairness or lack thereof in the distribution of the potential socio-cultural, economic or ecological benefits deriving from landscape.
Landscape research in this area considers who has voice, power and responsibility, and how by extension justice, democracy and citizenship are exercised.
Due to the popularity and ongoing relevance of the landscape justice theme, which was the focus for the 50th Anniversary Research Fund, we are continuing to fund projects under this theme for 2020. We would particularly welcome projects focusing on the interplay of landscape justice and rapid environmental change. This was a key theme arising from the Landscape Symposium held in December 2019, where reflections on how the language we use in speaking, framing and studying landscape impacts on the nature of landscape research, the subject matter, the participants and the outcomes.
The Research Fund will support applications for:
- Critical and creative research into the circumstances in which injustice is generated and sustained in landscape contexts in relation in particular to landscape governance and rapid environmental change;
- Critical and creative research into injustices that are historically-embedded in the landscape, that are emerging now or that might emerge in the future, particular in relation to landscape governance and rapid environmental change;
- Critical and creative research into the impacts of the language used in communicating ideas and issues around landscape with different audiences. “Language” is here understood in the broad sense to include visual/pictorial/image and tonal based forms of language, as well as verbal and written language.
- Critical and creative research that addresses the interplay as revealed through language used between organisations, audiences and outcomes in developing policies and practices that address landscape injustice and rapid environmental change
- Projects and activities that make use of critical and creative research in the development and implementation of policies, practices and/or actions that address landscape injustice and rapid environmental change;
- Critical and creative projects and activities that create opportunities and mechanisms for the generation, dissemination and/or use of knowledge, understanding or insight into landscape justice and rapid environmental change.
Timing
Deadline for submission of applications:
8th March 2020
Applicants notified of funding decision by:
30th March 2020
Earliest possible project start date:
8th April 2020
Projects to be completed by*:
31st March 2021
* The project completion date refers to the main project activities. It is accepted that some activities, particularly relating to project outputs, may continue on after this date (e.g. where a paper has been submitted to a journal for publication but has yet to go through peer review and be published), although it is expected that continuation of activities beyond 31st December 2020 will be avoided wherever possible. Applicants should specify a project timetable in Section 2 of the Application Form and, where an activity is anticipated to continue beyond 31st March 2021, this should be explained and justified.
Download full details, eligibility criteria and application form here (Word document).