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TerraNova Academy Field School - TAFS I

Hunter/Gatherers, Energy Regime 1
The Netherlands

Experience from TAFS

The first TerraNova Academy Field School (TAFS) took place at Berg en Dal from the 7 to the 12 of October. This was the fist occasion for our 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs), supervisors and the project managers to get together, strength the TerrNova network and to discuss the future of the collective and personal projects.

Core Day Conference

The 15 ESRs were the protagonists of first day. After a brief introduction on the project structure and interconnections between Working Packages, each ESR took the floor to present her/his Personal Career Development Plan. This was a great chance to share academic and personal goals and to get feedbacks from the TerraNova community. Kalle Lindholm then closed the first day by presenting ways of disseminating the project’s outcomes and a dissemination stategy has been set up.

Training Days

In the morning of day 2, Peter Verburg and Didier Roche lead a training session on agent based model and climate modelling, giving the ESRs the opportunity to discuss about modelling methodologies and linked issues, and to practically work on an ABM model.

The TerraNova network consider dissemination as a core aspect of research. For this reason, in the morning of day 3 a specialist from the Film university of Babelsberg (Germany), gave a workshop on how to use video to communicate our research to the different audiences. For this workshop, ESRs challenged themselves by producing short videos explaining their personal research projects.

Cooperation had been a central theme of the TAFS. On day 4, Kalle Lindholm not only presented different techniques of co-creating knowledge, but also transmitted to everyone the great importance of collaboration between all the component of the TerraNova network.

Field Based Study

The last two days of TAFS 1 were dedicated to field activities in the Gelderse poort area and Land van Maas en Waal area. Over these two days, local experts guided the fellows troughout the landscape focusing on elements from the first energy regime.

Day1: Understanding the landscape evolution around Gelderse Poort, the fluvial morphology of the Rhine-Meuse, and walking to the Allarod meander scar of the Meuse and through the Yonger Dryas dunes towards the Holocene Meuse flooplain.

Day2: walking around Montferland and Wall region to understand the ancient human occupation of the area from Mesolithic to the Iron Age and the tools that hunter-gatherers used for hunting or for leatherworks. The last step was the Rewilding Europe, visiting the site, how it was created and the species that were reintroduced.

Beyond TerraNova

The afternoon of day 3 was dedicated to speakers not directly involved in the TerraNova ITN. Other similar projects (Herilands and Newcomers) were presented, and two interesting conferences about co-designing the Antropocene and about cosmology were held respectively by Prof. Erle Ellis and Katherine Snow.

Back to the Future Landscape

Dissemination is a key word for TerraNova, not only within the academic community, but also to the general public.

On the evening of day 2, a public event which mixed music, speeches and debates, and wich saw about a hundred participants, was held by TerraNova members at Honig Fabriek in Nijmegen.

Frank Arthus moderate the evening which was composed two speeches gave by Jen Svenning, Hans Renssen and an interactive survey conducted and animated by Leen Felix and Laura Quintero.

We warmly thanks the Honing Fabrik to gave us the opportunity to present our project trough this event and the present public for the active and engaged participation.

Written by: Maria Antonia Serge and Roberta Rigo

PROGRAM

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TERRANOVA