Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscapes 2026

RECONCILING CHALLENGES IN LANDSCAPES

7-13 September 2026, Ghent & Spa, Belgium

We hereby welcome you to the PECSRL 2026, the 31st session of the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscapes (PECSRL). This biannual congress gathers landscape researchers across Europe and beyond who study mainly rural landscapes of the past, present, and future from an interdisciplinary perspective, including historical geography, landscape ecologists, social scientists, human geographers, physical geographers, historians, archaeologists, rural planners, landscape architects, landscape managers, as well as other scholars and practitioners interested in European landscapes.

PECSRL 2026 will be organized in Ghent and Spa (Belgium) as a collaboration of Ghent University and the University of Liège.

Theme

Landscapes embody the continuous dialogue between people and land through time. They can be read as palimpsests of the interaction between biophysical and environmental processes and societies adapting and reshaping their surroundings. Once primarily shaped by agrarian livelihoods and relatively stable demographic patterns, rural landscapes are now navigating complex challenges, including climate change impacts, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, land-use conflicts, social inequality, shifting cultural identities… Main driving forces, such as demography, economy, politics, technology, and natural calamities, initiate a series of interacting landscape change processes.

The landscapes we live in today – our living landscapes – are shaped by complex feedback loops, often leading to a polarisation of geographical space. Densely populated areas are characterised by processes of urbanisation, intensification, industrialisation, and competition between land uses, while depopulation has led to ruralisation, land and settlement abandonment, the loss of the agricultural mosaic, and the decline of services. As more people live in urban places than in rural areas and the rural population is declining, the relationship between urban and rural areas has changed over time.

In this context, there is an urgent need to seek balance and foster harmony among the often conflicting, competing, and even contradictory demands or interests placed on the whole range of rural landscapes currently facing similar challenges, such as climate change impacts, environmental degradation, social inequality, … Landscapes with high and low human pressures have different resilience and adaptability when it comes to responses to flooding and drought, biodiversity loss, food security, heritage protection, landscape management,... 

The challenge is how to study these over- and depopulated landscapes from a structural, functional, and historical perspective. How to understand the intertwining factors that play a role in and shape landscapes? How to strengthen urban-rural connections? How to regenerate empty landscapes, reduce regional disparities, and support landscape community resilience?

The conference theme will focus on how to understand the process of finding balance or harmony among conflicting, opposing, contradictory demands or interests in landscapes.

PECSRL 2026 will discuss the following processes that are at stake in a variety of European landscapes and resulting in different stages of change and continuity in both rural and urbanised landscapes.

• Intensification and extensification
• Multifunctionality and homogenisation
• Urbanisation and ruralisation
• Overpopulated and empty landscapes
• Abandonment and revitalisation
• Flooding and drought
• Development and restoration
• Disconnecting and linking
• Coupling and segregation

Programme

• During the first two days (7 and 8 September) in Ghent, the opening session, keynotes, parallel and poster sessions will be scheduled.
• The field trips are planned on Wednesday (9 September), allowing the participants an experience of traveling across a range of Belgian landscapes.
• The two days (10 and 11 September) in Spa will host the keynotes and parallel sessions, the conference dinner, and the closing session.
• Following the conference, a post-conference excursion will be organised (11 to 13 September).

Important dates

1 March 2026

Call for abstracts

15 April 2026

Deadline for submission of abstract

24 April 2026

Notification of acceptance of abstracts. Opening conference registrations

15 June 2026

Closing early bird registrations

31 July 2026

Closing late registrations

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE 2026 PECSRL