LCHAM PGR 2024 Conference: Changing Landscapes

This year’s LCAHM PGR conference took place on Wednesday 1 May at the University of Birmingham campus. The conference brought together PG researchers from across the School and further afield to explore the ways in which landscapes are changing. Researchers have examined a variety of changes in ecological, social, political, and other landscapes and asked how these changes reflect and shape culture, both currently and historically.

Changing Landscapes was organized by LCAHM postgraduate students and reflected the school’s interdisciplinary strengths, with themes ranging from ancient stone circles to gender norms in Great Gerwig’s Barbie, the sound of glaciers and contemporary digital landscapes.

The works explored representations of ecological landscapes in art, music and text. Presenters considered the intersections of climate change, landscape and literature, the rise of the Anthropocene, changing linguistic environments, and more. Keynote speaker Dr Darya Tsymbalyuk spoke about her work documenting the war in Ukraine through art, photography and interviews, with a particular focus on her commitment to public engagement. She discussed her project, Donbass Odyssey, which documents memories of plants, gardens and landscapes among displaced people from Ukraine.

The Changing Landscapes conference was funded by LCAHM with support from the Institute for German Studies and the Graduate Center for Europe.

In a world that is constantly changing, both globally and locally, this conference sought to address how change happens, as well as how people respond to it. The diverse range of work highlighted that change is not just something that happens to people and places, but also to approaches, ways of seeing and ways of understanding. There were many thoughtful discussions throughout the day, and the organizers hope that the conference led all participants to consider what it means to exist in a changing landscape.

Written by Becky Smith (PhD Art History)