The AHRC has announced the first eleven Larger Research Grants for the five year £5.5 million trans-disciplinary Landscape and Environment Research Programme.

This new AHRC programme is aimed at breaking new ground in bringing together researchers from a wide range of disciplines and approaches to address the changing ways landscapes and environments have been imagined, experienced, designed, made and managed, and in communicating the research findings to a wide audience.

Over £4 million is being given out to the eleven new award holders whose key to research success will be collaboration with other organizations such as overseas institutions and academics, regional and national museums as well as heritage bodies.

Competition for these awards was very tough indeed with the Commissioning Panel considering 124 eligible applications for Larger Research Grants, of which 27 were invited to proceed to full application stage. From those 27 applications the 11 awards were made.

Successful award holders include:

• A team from the University of Oxford looking at the sequence of environmental changes in south west Ethiopia over the last 200 years. They will be working with the British Institute of East Africa amongst other organizations
• A Royal Holloway project, working with Peruvian collaborators, looking at how the Inca empire modified the Andean landscape to enhance its productive capacity and so create the largest native state in the Americas

Other collaborative research teams include one from University of Liverpool, in partnership with National Museums Liverpool and English Heritage, looking at popular music and its impact on the urban environment of the Mersey city.

AHRC Director of Research Tony McEnery said "Each of the award winners is thoroughly deserving of this funding. Their research will help greatly to enrich our understanding of the environments in which humanity has made, and continues to make, an impact."

For further information on the Landscape and Environment research programme please go to: http://ahrcinternalweb/FundingOpportunities/Pages/LandscapeandEnvironment.aspx

Media Contact

For further information on these awards or to speak with the academics concerned, please contact Jake Gilmore, AHRC Press and Public Affairs Officer, j.gilmore@ahrc.ac.uk; tel: 0117 987 6773.

Editors Notes

Arts and Humanities Research Council: Each year the AHRC provides approximately £90 million to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from archaeology and English literature to design and dance. In any one year, the AHRC makes approximately 700 research awards and around 1,500 postgraduate awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. Arts and humanities researchers constitute nearly a quarter of all research-active staff in the higher education sector. The quality and range of research supported not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.

The Landscape and Environment Research Programme aims to establish distinctive, innovative and engaging arts and humanities research perspective on landscape and environment through projects of the highest quality and international significance. Across the range of its activity, the Programme will draw on a range of disciplinary expertise and resources to produce work which is critical and creative, collaborative and communicative, and seeking to change the ways landscape and environment are understood. The Programme has a budget of £5.5 million and is running from 2005 to 2010.
http://www.landscape.ac.uk/index.htm

Full list of Landscape and Environment Award Holders:

Landscape, people, and parks: environmental change in the Lower Omo valley, Southwestern Ethiopia
Dr D M Anderson, School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, University of Oxford

The Cultured Rainforest: Long-term human ecological histories in the highlands of Borneo
Professor GW Barker, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge

Inca ushnus: landscape, site and symbol in the Andes
Dr NP Branch, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London

Militarized landscapes in the twentieth-century: Britain, France and the United States
Dr P Coates, Department of Historical Studies, University of Bristol

Popular Musicscapes and the Characterisation of the Urban Environment
Dr S Cohen, School of Music, University of Liverpool

Changing landscapes, changing environments: enclosures and culture in Northamptonshire, 1700-1900
Professor MF Cragoe, School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire

The Sublime Object: Nature, Art and Language
Mr R Humphreys, Tate Britain, Tate Galleries

The Indian Ocean: narratives in literature and law
Dr S Jones, Department of English, University of Southampton

The Future of Landscape and the Moving Image
Mr P Keiller, Department of Communication Art and Design, Royal College of Art

Contested Common Land: environmental governance, law and sustainable land management c.1600-2006
Professor C P Rodgers, Newcastle Law School, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

The Early Modern Parish Church and the Religious Landscape
Dr A Spicer, Department of History, Oxford Brookes University