Landscapes surround us constantly—through the classroom window, in travel photos, in cityscapes and nature reserves. Yet what do your students see when they look at the world around them?

Join us for a free webinar that will change the way you think about landscapes—not just as views, but as spaces filled with memory, identity, and meaning.

Date: 15 April 2025
Time: 16:00 CET
Language: English
Registration: Click here to register

We tend to think of landscapes as something static—a view, a background, a setting. But what if we considered them instead as living texts? As emotional, historical, and political spaces that shape the way we experience the world?

A landscape is not just a backdrop to our lives—it influences how we perceive history, how we build identity, and how we relate to nature and each other. It is never neutral—it carries emotion, memory, ownership—and often, conflict.

This interdisciplinary webinar invites educators, teachers, and cultural practitioners to rethink the meaning of landscapes and their role in education.

Together with Dr. Mateusz Salwa—philosopher, environmental aesthetics scholar, and author of The Landscape. An Aesthetic Phenomenon—we will explore how landscapes speak to us, influence our perceptions, and become contested spaces of identity, power, and memory.

Throughout the session, we will present discussion questions, visual materials, and activity ideas that can be adapted to classroom use—across subjects such as history, art, social studies, biology, and civic education. Together we will ask questions which are worth asking:

  • Can the “ordinary” landscape be as meaningful as the spectacular?
  • Who defines what makes a landscape “beautiful”?
  • Can landscape photography document or distort reality?
  • Is a beautiful landscape always worth preserving—or is the ordinary just as important?
  • What do students really see when they look at the world around them?

The event will be hosted by Dr. Konrad Bielecki, historian and member of the ENRS Academic Section, known for his expertise in cultural history and education.

At the end of the webinar, we will also introduce a new ENRS initiative: the B-SHAPES Summer School: Landscape as Heritage, which will take place from 22–24 August 2025 in Zgorzelec/Görlitz. Applications for the summer school are now open.

This is more than a webinar—it’s an invitation to look again.

Register now: https://forms.office.com/e/0Bb6p92g1L

Bios:

Dr Mateusz Salwa is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Warsaw, and head of the Chair of Aesthetics. His research focuses on environmental aesthetics, bridging art history and philosophy. He is the author of The Landscape. An Aesthetic Phenomenon and Garden Aesthetics: Between Art and Ecology. His recent publications explore landscape, phenomenology, and urban aesthetics (incl. Routledge, Estetica, Popular Inquiry).

Dr Konrad Bielecki is a historian, specializing in cultural history. He graduated from the Jagiellonian University (2012) and received his PhD from the Polish Academy of Sciences (2022). A recipient of scholarships from NSC, Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, and De Brzezie Lanckoronski Foundation, he also interned at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum. He has extensive experience in educational and exhibition projects and joined the ENRS Academic Section in 2022.