Professor of Rural Sociology Han Wiskerke has been appointed Lecturer of Food Landscapes at the Department of Landscape Architecture. According to Wiskerke, his research into the development of sustainable food landscapes, in combination with design research by students at the Academy of Architecture, can lead to interesting solutions for the future. He has been appointed for a period of four years, starting on 1 January 2013.

Wiskerke is a frequent guest at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. In addition to holding classes and giving lectures, he is currently supervising a graduation project by a master’s student in landscape architecture. At Wageningen University, where he is professor and chair of the Rural Sociology Group, he combines his research with extensive work in education, including the supervision of doctoral students. He has directed more several research projects funded by the European Commission, and this year he will start a research programme about multifunctional regional food landscapes.

Han Wiskerke succeeds landscape architect and writer Thomas Oles, who directed the Living Landscape research and lecture programme. A publication about Oles’s research at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture will be released shortly by Architectura & Natura Publishers. Wiskerke will also compile a publication and organise a Capita Selecta lecture series devoted to his research subject, in which he wants to link rural and urban (food) landscapes, and to deploy designs to initiate debate about future development paradigms.

With the appointment of Han Wiskerke, the Academy now has three lecturers, one for each of the master’s courses: Architecture (Jan-Peter Wingender), Urbanism (Ton Schaap) and Landscape Architecture. The lecturers form part of the ‘expertise network’ within the Amsterdam School of the Arts, which brings together specialists from a range of disciplines. The lecturers promote interaction between developments in the arts on the one hand and the education and research policies of the school and of the individual faculties on the other. This reflects the ambition of the school to offer quality education at master’s level in every field of study.