Landscape Research Group - Research Fund 2026

Sponsor

Landscape Research Group (LRG)

Program

Landscape Research Group’s 2026 Research Fund

Description

Reimagining landscape change: Methods and Tools for a Transforming World

Landscapes are changing at an unprecedented pace and will continue to do so in the coming years due to a wide range of interacting drivers, including climate change, more-than-human relations, wars and displacement, economic pressures, rapid urbanisation and depopulation. These processes are reshaping landscapes in complex and uneven ways, challenging how they are understood, represented and governed. In this context, robust understanding is essential for effective action. Landscape researchers therefore have a critical role in developing new ways of seeing, analysing and interpreting landscape change. It is increasingly important to continuously advance, test and rethink the methods and tools through which landscapes are studied.

This year, the Research Fund invites proposals that develop interdisciplinary, innovative and methodologically advanced approaches to understanding landscape change across scales, ranging from planetary systems to intimate, lived environments, encompassing humans, non-humans and more-than-human relations in more equitable ways.

Areas of interest

The Research Fund will support proposals that develop or apply new methods, tools and approaches in the following areas:

• Historical, memory-based and biographical methods: Approaches that use oral histories, archives, maps, Indigenous knowledge systems, collective memory and other historical sources as structured methodological tools for interpreting long-term landscape change, including landscape biography approaches that integrate layered temporal understandings of place.
• Computational, spatial and visual methods for landscape change: Development and application of AI, geoAI, machine learning, computer vision, remote sensing and large language models to analyse, simulate and anticipate landscape change, combined with spatial analysis techniques and advanced visualisation methods such as participatory mapping, 3D modelling, immersive visualisation and augmented/virtual reality tools.
• Creative and arts-based research methods: Arts-informed methodologies (e.g. visual arts, performance, digital creativity) that enable new forms of understanding and communicating landscape change, including participatory and community-engaged approaches.
• Language and knowledge systems as methodological tools: Approaches that use linguistic diversity and Indigenous knowledge systems as structured methods for interpreting landscape change and enabling cross-cultural and transboundary understanding.
• Participatory and co-produced methods: Development of tools and frameworks for collaborative research with communities, stakeholders and more-than-human perspectives, enabling shared interpretation and decision-making in contexts of rapid landscape change.
• Ethical, reflexive and decolonial research methodologies: Frameworks and tools that embed ethics into landscape research practice, including data sovereignty, Indigenous governance, consent and more-than-human ethical considerations, alongside approaches that critically examine knowledge production and challenge dominant epistemologies to support more inclusive and plural understandings of landscape change.
• International law and governance tools for landscape change: Methodological innovations that support legal and policy responses to spatial injustice, transboundary landscape change and evolving planetary governance frameworks, including tools for analysing human and non-human rights and responsibilities.
• Policy-to-practice methodological interfaces: Tools that translate landscape research into actionable policy and practice, improving the design, implementation and evaluation of interventions addressing landscape change.

LRG invite researchers from diverse disciplines to contribute to this critical and evolving field, fostering deeper understanding of landscape change.

Eligibility

The Research Fund is open to projects addressing any aspect of landscape in line with LRG’s Research Strategy. LRG take a broad view of research and welcome proposals including research, development, knowledge exchange, dissemination and capacity-building.

There are no restrictions on discipline, sector or nationality. Applicants must be LRG members.

LRG particularly encourage applications from early-career researchers, independent researchers and arts-based practitioners, especially where proposals demonstrate collaboration, exchange and clear public benefit.

Funding Availability

A total of £15,000 is available for the 2026 Research Fund.

Applicants may request between £1,000 and £5,000. The grants awarded through the LRG Research Fund are typically small (most are around £3,000 or less). 

Preference will be given to proposals that maximize the impact of LRG support through additional funding or in-kind contributions. The fund is not intended to support projects that already have significant external funding.

Indirect Costs

The LRG does not have a formal indirect cost rate policy; 40% indirect cost rate applies. Applications that convert to less than $5K CAD will be exempt from indirect costs.