H1. When history meets future – future challenges for historical landscape research

Stig Roar Svenningsen (Royal Danish Library), STSV@kb.dk

Dominik Kaim (Jagiellonian University in Cracow), dominik.kaim@uj.edu.pl

Gregor Levin (Aarhus University)

Geoff Groom (Aarhus University)

Krzysztof Ostafin (Jagiellonian University in Cracow)

Catalina Munteanu (Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg)

Summary

The session will contribute to the discussion about the main challenges of historical landscape research, applied by different disciplines. We invite geographers, ecologists, historians, but also engineers to join us to indicate the most important aspects which might be reflected and developed by closure of technological gaps, improved data availability, increased collaboration and sharing of knowledge.

Description

In recent years the availability of historical data in digital form has increased and been made more accessible, which makes the analyses of historical landscapes much easier. Obtaining scans of the maps, but also digitised machine-readable versions of map content limits time-consuming procedures and expands the analytical opportunities. This has resulted in more regional rather than just local historical landscape studies being published in the scientific journals. Many people also use advanced modelling techniques to analyse the landscape change over time. However, many research gaps and obstacles are left when obtaining and analysing historical data. During this session, we want to discuss the main challenges, addressing of which can help in future historical landscape research in the overall understanding of cultural landscapes. Are these challenges mainly connected to the difficulties in data acquisition, or are they rather a result of a lack of collaboration and communication among researchers of various disciplines incl. historians, ecologists, geographers, and engineers?

The core question of the symposium is how an interdisciplinary approach when studying historical landscapes can be moved forward and how different disciplines can contribute to the understanding of historical landscape changes? We want to present and discuss examples of techniques of automatic feature extractions, making large historical datasets easily available, but also indicate the remaining barriers of historical landscape research. So, this session will contribute to the discussion about the understanding of the evolution of historical landscapes and the main challenges of historical landscape research. Contributions from different disciplines are welcomed, focussing both on methodological issues as well as on case studies of analysis of historical/cultural landscapes.

Impact

A potential outcome of the session is a joint research paper indicating the most important challenges of historical landscape research in the future. We hope that such a paper prepared by the session participants might have the potential to be published in one of the scientific journals recognised by the community.