The LUS Institute investigates landscapes, territories, and settlements – and the human and more-than-human relations that shape them – across scales and geographies, from Switzerland and Europe to diverse contexts throughout the so-called Global North and Global South.
Its research examines the spatial, environmental, political, (geo)historical, and more-than-human relations through which contemporary environments are produced, contested, and continually reshaped. The Institute engages with a broad set of interconnected themes that explore how these environments evolve. Core areas of inquiry include territorial and urban transformation; post-industrial and resource-affected territories; and the global–local entanglements that drive ongoing urbanisation processes. These interests are complemented by research into more-than-human and multispecies spatialities, foregrounding ecological interdependencies within changing landscapes.
Research projects address topics such as designed ecologies, energy transitions, housing, agroecology, hydrology, biodiversity and ecosystem processes, regenerative systems, and adaptive territorial infrastructures. Additional areas of focus include more-than-human landscapes, Indigenous territorialities, and socio-ecological and socio-economic transitions, and climate adaptation – together offering a comprehensive lens on the challenges and potentials of present and future development of landscapes, territories, and settlements.
The doctoral programme adopts an inter- and transdisciplinary approach, integrating architecture, landscape architecture, urban and territorial design, planning, urban theory and history, as well as the social sciences. It welcomes a wide range of methodological approaches, spanning (geo)historical research into landscape and urban form, participatory and community-engaged methods, qualitative and ethnographic inquiry, as well as cartographic, spatial, and mapping techniques.
Research and Fellows
Andra Pop-Jurj
(Diss-Titel unbekannt)
Raquel Jerobon
Pastoral Urbanisms in Extended Urbanization and Production of Social Space
A Case of Maasai Territories of Loita-Mara-Serengeti in Southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania
(alle Angaben sind bei ihr angefragt, 1.6.26)
Juan Villalón Hernando
Olive Practices
Learning from Cultivated and Designed Landscapes by Olive Trees, Farmers, and Landscape Architects in the Valencian Territory
Stefan Laxness
The Right to the Landscape
Commoning Through Landscape Restoration in Europe
Santiago del Hierro
Beyond Reservations
Towards an Expanded Representation of Indigenous Territory in the Northern Andean Amazon
Jacopo Zani
A Landscape of Migrations
Minor Ecologies of Post-war Coal Mining Settlements in Belgium
Robin Hueppe
Can The Land Speak?
Exploring East and West Berlin Mass Housing Estates From the Ground up
Ina Valkanova
To Open Up a Box and Find a Whole New World
Johanna Just
Extractive Ecologies
An Earthly Writing of Space. Collaborative Adventures in Constructed Landscapes of the Upper Rhine Plain
Sara Frikech
Hydrological Landscapes of Empire in Morocco
Camila Medina Novoa
Producing Ornamental Trees
The case of the Araucaria araucana species, Chile-UK (19th century)
Nicole de Lalouvière
Irrigation Systems of Canton Valais: A Resilient Landscape Common?