Landscape Research journal marks fifty years and announces 2025 prize winners

In his editorial, Fifty years of Landscape Research, Hannes reflects on the journal’s development since 1976, when the Landscape Research Group transformed its internal newsletter into a scholarly journal. From the outset, the aim was to provide a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue across the many disciplines engaged in landscape research, including design, planning, ecology, geography, and cultural studies.Over the past five decades the journal has grown significantly in both reach and influence. Submissions and readership have expanded well beyond the United Kingdom and Europe, with increasing contributions from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The editorial also highlights several thematic shifts that have shaped the journal in recent years, including growing interest in landscape and health, urban landscapes, climate resilience, and new methodological approaches to landscape research.

At the same time, Landscape Research has continued to emphasise the broad, interdisciplinary understanding of landscape that has characterised the journal since its founding. Recent issues reflect the field’s evolving concerns, from questions of landscape governance and justice to heritage, participation, and more-than-human perspectives.

Alongside the anniversary reflection, the editorial also announces the recipients of the 2025 Landscape Research prizes, awarded annually by the Landscape Research Group.

Best Paper Prize

Two papers have been awarded the Best Paper Prize for 2025:

• Burlingame, K. (2025). Landscape geographies: Interdisciplinary landscape research and a new framework to apply landscape as method. Landscape Research, 50(5), 754–765.
• Weisser, W. W., & Hauck, T. E. (2025). Animal-Aided Design – planning for biodiversity in the built environment by embedding a species’ life-cycle into landscape architectural and urban design processes. Landscape Research, 50(1), 146–167.

Both papers were recognised for their contribution to advancing interdisciplinary approaches to landscape research and for offering new conceptual and methodological perspectives within the field.

Best Paper by an Early Career Researcher

The prize for Best Paper by an Early Career Researcher has been awarded to:

• Overstreet, K., & Sørensen, T. F. (2025). Unnaming the common: landscape encounters in the anthropocene. Landscape Research, 50(2), 302–318.

The paper explores how encounters with landscapes in the Anthropocene challenge conventional understandings of shared environments and invites new ways of thinking about common spaces and ecological relationships.

Each prize carries a £250 award provided by the Landscape Research Group. The selection process follows criteria established in previous editorials and recognises papers that make a significant contribution to landscape research.

Over the coming weeks, the Landscape Research Group will publish a series of short features highlighting the work of each of the prize-winning authors.

The full editorial by Hannes Palang, Fifty years of Landscape Research, can be read via Taylor & Francis.