The Centre for Global Heritage and Development, together with Utrecht University, Free University Amsterdam and Amsterdam University Press introduced in 2019 the online, open access, peer reviewed Journal of European Landscapes (JEL).
As a result of growing economic interdependence and political integration, Europe becomes ever more important as a spatial framework for research. This is particularly true for landscape research. The development of landscapes is highly dependent on the politics of the European Union. Policies on landscape and heritage are increasingly influenced by international cooperation.
For disciplines with a geographical dimension, such as archaeology, landscape and heritage, this results in comparative research in regions in Europe and, sometimes, on Europe as a whole. As a result, there is a growing awareness of the European dimensions of landscape and heritage. Although landscape is a theme that is increasingly studied on a European level (in fact, landscape is often described as a typical European theme), there is no journal that focuses on landscape.
JEL fills this gap by stimulating and promoting both empirical research and reflexive thinking on the history and heritage of the landscapes of Europe. In our opinion, the proposed journal should focus on the history and heritage of landscape. For the historical dimension, the tradition of ‘landscape history and archaeology’, a successful research tradition on the British isles, could be seen as a good basis. This tradition is also of growing importance in continental Europe. Heritage, defined as the present use of the past, is a good addition to this as it connects historical research with modern planning and management.