We are a group of university departments from four European countries (Sweden, Netherlands, Italy and Spain), studying landscape and land use dynamics from different disciplinary perspectives. We conduct research on the long- term dynamics of enduring agricultural landscapes and their biocultural heritage. Today these landscapes are under threat due to climate change, intense land abandonment and consequent degradation, which represent a huge threat for their ecological complexity, cultural heritage and socio- economic conditions of local communities. These problems are the results of complex socio-ecological dynamics happened over the long term. To tackle them, we need to develop new research approaches and, more importantly, equip our students and researchers which specific skills that can allow them to integrate different conceptual tools and technical methods for conducting scientific investigations. For this reason, with the project “A new cross-disciplinary framework for studying the landscape over the long term” we intend to develop a new pedagogical framework bridging the divide between humanities and natural sciences, which may allow cross-disciplinarity and high quality research, so to better investigate the complexity of contemporary issues. We will do so through the step-wise design and testing of a training scheme for postgraduate students and early career researchers, based on critical pedagogies and covering the integration of object-based analysis in the broader field of landscape and historical ecology studies. The foreseen impacts are many, from a fundamental change of perspectives towards more critical approaches in the pedagogy of spatial analysis, to relevant scientific contributions in the field of cross-disciplinary research. Last but not least, an overall improvement of research skills in the postgraduate students involved, as well as transfer of knowledge and best practices across higher education institutions at international level.
In the CROSSLAND project, we have developed a new crossdisciplinary Pedagogical Framework. Grounding on the belief that high-quality contents for postgraduate training could be ensured by the cross-fertilisation of knowledge and methodologies developed, validated and transferred among different disciplinary fields, in our project we have developed a new pedagogical framework in landscape research, centred on the crossdisciplinary application of combined geospatial analysis methods and techniques. We used the concept of space and geospatial analysis as a tool to build bridges between disciplinary boundaries and create a new cross-disciplinary inquiry framework based on student-centred active learning. The overall aim was to develop a new crossdisciplinary pedagogy enabling young researchers to address current environmental issues at the science-society interface, while doing transformative research in geospatial pedagogical approaches and didactic practices.
Current environmental crises resulting from long term human-environment dynamics represent huge threats for ecological complexity, biocultural heritage and socioeconomic conditions of local communities. Crossdisciplinary research can address these problems, since able to integrate knowledge from diverse fields and equip the new generation of researchers and landscape managers with skills to create sustainable futures. In order to achieve this goal, we need new pedagogical frameworks dedicated to researchers and professionals in the early stage of their career. The reason why we applied for the CROSSLAND project has been thus to provide postgraduate and PhD students with new inquiry tools able to better investigate complex socio-ecological systems and tackle contemporary environmental issues. Behind such idea stands a cross-disciplinary partnership, made of higher education institutions coming from different disciplines and countries, studying landscapes, ecosystems and sustainability issues from diverse disciplines, but pooled together by the idea that space as a concept and geospatial analysis as a tool can bridge disciplinary divides and support the development of a new crossdisciplinary pedagogy.