The Naturescapes project is pleased to announce a Spring School focused on the politics and consequences of the growing engagement with nature-based solutions (NBS) across urban, peri-urban and coastal environments. We will explore themes related to how nature is being valued, imagined, governed and contested, and the implications these processes have for transformative change and just futures in different contexts and at different scales.
We invite PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and other early career scholars involved in research projects related to the benefits and trade-offs of expanding NBS to join our 2025 Spring School. The school is designed as a 3-days event organised as a space of exchange, debate and learning. Early career scholars will have the opportunity to present, discuss and improve ongoing research papers and/or findings, engaging with theoretical questions, preliminary analyses of empirical findings and reflections on epistemological/methodological dimensions (or a combination of these).
The School will include interactive workshops in which early career scholars present their findings (~20 min) and receive comments from a mentor and participants (~30 min.); keynote speeches from senior scholars and policy makers in the field; Q&A on strategies and tips for academic publishing, and post-PhD challenges; networking; wrap-up session with discussion on lessons learned, and an excursion to a nature-based solution project in the Lisbon metropolitan area.
Prof. Harriet Bulkeley (University of Utrecht and Durham University), Prof. Kes McCormick (Lund University), Prof. Yuliya Voytenko Palgan (Lund University) and Prof. Olivia Bina (ICSULisboa) will be among the leading scholars who will accompany the events of the School. We aim to schedule two keynote speeches featuring discussions of the School's three themes.