Long-term regional development - The role of change in understanding long-term regional development. Approaching the dynamic metabolism of social-ecological systems in the Segalassos/Aglasun region

From 01-10-2017 to 30-09-2021

Description

Change is a constant in the past, at least as much as it is in the present and will be in the future. It is the embodiment of life's encompassing capacity to continuously adapt, along the uniqueness and irreversability of the timeline. Change encapsulates emergent properties, manifested at differing rates, scales and impact, affecting the dynamic metabolism of social-ecological systems, representing the interplay of diverse humans and non-humans in their mutual involvement, articulated to form the immense and continually evolving tapestry of life. Change being omni-present makes it complex to pin down: its identification can be difficult in data-rich environments; analysis on different scales across different epochs and the assessment of effects runs the risk of imbalance and showing considerable gaps; conceptualizations in different disciplines may be contradictory, complimentary or instead
offering openings to interdisciplinary reconceptualization.

The partnership of Archaeology, Geography, Ecology and Spatial Planning Studies, extended with the fields of Data Analysis and Information Visualization, wishes to contribute to the fundamental understanding of the role of change in social-ecological systems, by:

- scrutinizing the notion of change in a data-intensive interdisciplinary/multi-method/multi-concept environment,
- bridging gaps between technological, cultural-historical, social, socio-political, ecological etc. disciplinary conceptualizations,
- positioning change in the specific thematic context of dynamic metabolic development of regional social-ecological systems, spanning the continuum from empirical to conceptually driven research, making use of and integrating analytical tools developed by the contributing disciplines,
- situating change in varying contexts along hierarchical, spatial and temporal scales (time-space dynamics), offered by the extensive and multi-modal datasets related to the Sagalassos/Ağlasun region, allowing the consortium to valorize case-studies in fundamental research – from epistemology to validation of research results –and to scale up their results to higher levels of synthesis and debate.

Research lines of the consortium will include:
- exploring big data-driven approaches validating hypotheses or generating new ones, based on patterning unidentified unknowns,
- evaluating evidence-chains, based on information visualization augmenting human analyical capacities,
- developing historical life cycle sustainability assessments, generating environmental and socio-economic impact indicators of the past,
- modelling natural resource extraction, land use and land use change in the long-term, based on archaeological, geographical and ecological methods,
- considering long-term changes to governance of land use rights and land policies,
- connecting multi-period material culture from rural contexts to economic, social, political and cultural dynamics
and ontologies,
- revisiting the wealth of theories of change and transformation in the disciplines and their interdisciplinary syntheses till now, to the benefit of the overall research endeavor.

Team

• Jan Aerts, Associated partner
• Jeroen Poblome, Coordinator (External)

Financing

Funding: KU Leuven - Internal Funding KU Leuven

Program/Grant Type: C1 - KU Leuven Category 1 Funding