From exploration to co-creation – Telling tales of land through fieldwork

Public lecture about fieldwork in a selection of Arctic geographies by Prof. Janike Kampevold Larsen

The lecture and Q&A will be moderated by Associate Professor Rikke Munck Petersen.

Followed by a reception. All are welcome!

This Copenhagen Landscape Lecture is organised by the Section for Landscape Architecture and Planning – Design.

Contact: Rikke Munck Petersen rmpe@ign.ku.dk 

Abstract

In a time where our environment changes extremely fast, to build knowledge on how historic practices such as grazing by free-ranging livestock (reindeer and sheep), cultivation of grasslands for fodder, the cutting of shrubs and trees for a multitude of uses, and expansive drainage of wetlands for grass production, represent challenges and hope for other ways of land use in Northern Norway, Denmark and beyond. It raises the question: In what ways can historic land use practices inform future regenerative approaches to wetlands and grasslands, to herding and husbandry?

In her lecture, IGN International Academy 2025 Professor Janike Kampevold Larsen will talk about and show forms of fieldwork in a small selection of Arctic geographies and reflect on the necessity of presence and embodies observation in an era where ground conditions are changing rapidly, thereby challenging our presumptions of what is landscape, land, and heritage in the Anthropocene.

Over the last 15 years Janike Kampevold Larsen has been walking, talking, and listening into the Arctic, with fellow researchers and other humans, with rocks, grasses, ice and sediments. Sometimes with ghostlike presences of people, plants and abandoned equipment that is now surrender to entropic processes. Often with real life people; glaciologists, ecologists, Arctic city dwellers, farmers, and reindeer herders.

About Professor Janike Kampevold Larsen

Professor at the Institute of Urbanism and Landscape at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

Janike Kampevold Larsen is a highly esteemed capacity in the field of land use interpretation, landscape practices and representations in the North. She is a landscape scholar with a background in literature and philosophy. Her research in and on Arctic landscapes encompasses local and imperial landscape practices as well as the culture and geopolitical agency of Arctic materialities like glacial ice, rocks and native species turned invasive. Her current teaching and research focuses on areas under pressure in the Norwegian Arctic, and on the cultural work performed by materialities in its different landscapes. She led the establishment of a pilot MA at University of Tromsø, UiT, and was one of the developers of the awarded 5-year landscape architecture program between UiT and The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, AHO. She is currently co-PI on The Community Water Systems project (2024-2027) and leading the Area under Pressure in Varanger project (2024-). She has supervised and examined numerous MA and PhD-students in landscape architecture.

Her recent publications include ‘Tinkering with fire: Mending grazing pastures in the Norwegian North’, (JoLA,2025) and ‘Love and Care for place in an Arctic community’ in Design and the Built Environment of the Arctic (2023). She co-edited the book Future North, the Changing Arctic Landscapes (2018) which deals with the relationship between landscape change and social change in some Arctic geographies.

Details

Time: 18 February 2026, 16.30
Place: Rolighedsvej 23, Frederiksberg C, Auditorium ’Von Langen’

Arranged by: Section for Landscape Architecture and Planning - Design