THE PERMANENT EUROPEAN CONFERENCE FOR THE STUDY OF THE RURAL LANDSCAPE

The Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape

• is an international network of landscape researchers whose interest focus on the past, present and future of European landscapes;
• is an international platform for new initiatives, meetings and publications about European rural landscapes;
• meets every two years in a different European country for lectures, discussions, working groups and landscape excursions;
• has several working groups that focus on actual problems in European landscape management and landscape research.

Conference aims and objectives

The Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape (PECSRL) is one of the most stable European networks of landscape researchers. It was established in 1957 at an inaugural conference held in Nancy, France. Initially, it consisted mainly of historical geographers, but during the last few decades its membership has diversified to include ecologists, social scientists, rural planners, landscape architects, human geographers, physical geographers, historians, archaeologists, landscape managers, as well as other scholars and practitioners interested in European landscapes. Members undertake both fundamental and applied research on all aspects of the rural landscape or have a position in landscape management or heritage management.

PECSRL covers Pan-Europe which means that it connects researchers from Northern, Eastern, Southern, Central and Western Europe. All together more than thirty European countries take part in PECSRL.

The unifying concept of PECSRL is the past, present and future of European landscapes, relating to landscape research as well as landscape policy and landscape management.

The main objectives of PECSRL are:

• to facilitate personal contacts and information exchange between European landscape researchers;
• to improve interdisciplinary cooperation between landscape researchers from various scientific and human landscape disciplines;
• to improve cooperation between landscape researchers and landscape managers;
• to function as a platform for new initiatives in European landscape research and landscape management.

An important medium for our network is the international PECSRL conference that is organised every two years in a different European country. Besides paper sessions, workshops and general meetings there is always a large field excursion to provide the PECSRL-participants with a detailed knowledge of the rural landscapes in the host country. Experience shows that PECSRL conferences offer ample facilities for meeting colleagues from all parts of Europe, for getting informed about various aspects of European landscape research and for initiating new projects on Europan landscape research.

Recent conference themes

• the management of cultural landscapes;
• the relevance of research in historical landscape change for landscape management;
• the role of landscape in the constitution of national and regional identity;
• the future of the past;
• the ecology of rural landscapes;
• ethnic diversity in the landscape;
• the language of landscape;
• changing perceptions and uses of land resources through time;
• landscape and GIS
• theoretical and methodological aspects of interdisciplinary landscape research.

Next conference: Lisbon, Portugal 2008

The 22nd session of the PECSRL will be held in Lisbon and Óbidos, Portugal, 1-5 September 2008, under the title "LANDSCAPES, IDENTITIES AND DEVELOPMENT", organised by Professor Zoran Roca of the Centro de Estudos de Geografia e Desenvolvimento of the Universita Lusófona in Lisbon. More information at the conference website http://tercud.ulusofona.pt/PECSRL2008.htm