Centre for Landscape Studies

The Centre for Landscape Studies brings together scholars from across the Arts and Science Faculties to work together in approaching studies of landscapes (real and imaginary) from different perspectives.

Recent years have seen an increased interest in landscape, space, environment and geography within English literature, History and Cultural Geography. That interest is increasingly apparent also within the discipline of Classics. Studies of space and place are of significant interest to scholars who work on representation and visualization of landscapes (especially within Art History, Classics, Film Studies, English Literature) as well as physical landscapes themselves (Archaeology, Computer Science, Geography). Those two strands have often been quite separate from each other, and a central aim of the centre for landscape studies is to facilitate the process of breaking down that dichotomy.

The centre aims to:

• Act as a focus for development of new techniques for mapping and visualising landscape.
• Foster an increased dialogue between the study of real historical landscapes and imagined historical landscapes.
• Give fresh attention to the importance of the past in understanding landscape.

Particularly important cross-disciplinary themes for the centre include:

• Conflict landscape studies.
• Memory and landscape.
• Religious uses of landscape.
• Landscapes of myth.
• Aesthetics of landscape and landscape viewing.
• Recording and representing landscapes.
• Environment and the natural world.
• Landscapes of the past shaping the future.
• Reconstructing landscapes.

The centre is based at the School of Classics, and it counts among its members and collaborators scholars based in the Schools of Art History & Geography and Geosciences, and the Department of Film Studies.

Regular events are held throughout the academic year.

Project website: http://landscape-studies.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/