We hereby welcome you to the PECSRL 2026, the 31st session of the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscapes (PECSRL, see www.pecsrl.org). 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.
We invite you to submit session proposals that will form the backbone of discussions and exchanges of research ideas related to the conference theme. Check here.
Conference 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
Important dates
- 5 December 2025
- Call for sessions
- 6 February 2026
- Deadline for submission of sessions
- 20 February 2026
- Call for abstracts
- 1 April 2026
- Deadlines 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
Call for sessions
The sessions organised by the participants will contribute to the interaction, discussions, and experiences during the PECSRL 2026. We therefore invite all of you to group with your colleagues and submit fascinating topics for the sessions.
+ Format of the sessions
You can define the session format yourself and organise it according to the objectives you have in mind. The Scientific Committee is encouraging you to include time for discussion and to consider interactive formats for the sessions.
All accepted sessions will be open for paper or poster contributions by the conference participants.
In case you want to organise a closed session, please contact the conference organisers.
+ How to submit your session proposal?
You can submit a session proposal by filling in the form: PECSRL 2026: Call for session proposals – Fill out form.
+ Selection process
The Scientific Committee and Organising Committee will review the session proposals. Our main selection criteria will be quality, relevance, diversity, and inclusivity. We particularly welcome sessions that:
- Stimulate and enhance scientific discourse and empirical knowledge on reconciling challenges in landscapes from different perspectives.
- Contribute to a conference program with a wide range of topics, landscapes, involved parties, scales, and regions.
- Use stimulating formats (paper session, workshop, round table, panel debate, open space, world café, role games, etc.) with opportunity for audience interaction.
- Showcase examples (case studies, best practices, tools, etc.) or research that are internationally applicable.
- Lead to a scientific or empirical/applied value.
The Organising Committee may ask session organisers to merge their proposed session with another session, to include additional contributors, or change the session format.
(Preliminary) 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).
Venues
In the tradition of the PECSRL conferences, the conference will be organised in two locations.
Ghent
Sint-Baafshuis is located in the historic city center of Ghent, right next to the Cathedral. Here the plenary and parallel sessions will take place.
Spa
Location to be announced later.
Travel
Belgium is easily accessible both by train and by plane. Many European cities have good international train connections to Brussels and Liège (via Cologne).
Brussels Airport has direct connections with all capital cities and other important airports in Europe and has an easy train connection to other cities in Belgium. The airport of Brussels South Charleroi is used by the low-cost airlines. From there, participants have to take a Flibco bus to Brussels or Ghent.
Ghent has direct train connections from Brussels Airport (one hour) and from the main stations in Brussels (for international trains).
The train from Spa to Brussels Airport (2 hours) or to Liège (45 minutes) for connections with the international trains.
Committees
The conference will be jointly organised by the Department of Geography of Ghent University (Veerle Van Eetvelde) and the Department of Geography of the University of Liège (Serge Schmitz).
Scientific committee
- Veerle Van Eetvelde, Ghent University, Belgium
- Serge Schmitz, University of Liège, Belgium
- Karl Martin Born, University of Vechta, Germany
- Hannes Palang, University of Tallinn, Estonia
- Ewa Skowronek, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Poland
- Tim Waterman, University College London, UK
- Arjen Conijn, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
More information needed?
- By registering the email list, you will be informed directly of the next announcements and more news: fill out the form here.
- You can contact the conference organisers via: PECSRL2026@ugent.be.
- More information will be published on the conference website (this page): https://www.geography.ugent.be/PECSRL2026
