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Draft:Peter J. Howard

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Peter J. Howard (b. 1944) is a British geographer, author and professor who studies and interprets the intersections of landscape, heritage, visual arts and their related disciplines. He is a Visiting Fellow at Bournemouth University.12 He was the founding editor of the International Journal of Heritage Studies (IJHS)3 and within Landscape Studies is known for introducing the concept of "perceptual history."4

Early life

Peter Howard attended Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Wimborne and Weston-super-Mare Grammar School for Boys for A-Levels in Geography, History and English. From 1962 to 1966 he attended University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he took BA Hons. in Geography, with additional course work in Economics, Norwegian and Classics. This was where his interest in landscape took hold.5

Academic Career

In 1974, Peter Howard accepted a newly created faculty position at Exeter College of Art and Design to teach geography to art students, a pairing without precedent that linked traditional views of "landscape" from Art History studies with its counterpart in Historical Geography.6 This led to Howard's regular column for The Geographical Magazine on art exhibitions and other topics related to aesthetics and the natural world.7 He joined the Landscape Research Group8 (LRG), founded by Jay Appleton and, influenced by Appleton's "Prospect Refuge" theory, led students to absorb and challenge its underlying assumptions. The scope of Howard's work and influence expanded with his editorship of Landscape Research,9 the international journal of LRG, from 1985 to 1993. National landscape identities became a focus for Howard, primarily through international field work and teaching in the Czech Republic (Břeclav), Italy (Reggio Calabria), Germany (Cottbus), the Netherlands (Groningen), Norway, Japan, Hong Kong, Greece (Mytilene), Spain (Zaragoza) and Venice. He served first as deputy chair of LRG, then as its International Officer. In this role, Howard co-organised, in collaboration with the French magazine Paysage + Amenagement,10 the conference 'Landscapes in a New Europe', in Blois (France), in 1992, which proposed a European Landscape Convention, eventually adopted by the Council of Europe in 2000 and became widely known as the Florence Convention.

Howard's academic home, Exeter College of Art and Design, later re-branded as University of Plymouth, is where he linked the Geography curriculum to other university departments. In 1991, this led to a degree program in Landscape and Heritage, at the time one of only two such programs in the UK to include the word "Heritage" (the other at Bournemouth University).

Main Publications

Howard is widely published.11 His first book, Landscapes: The Artists' Vision (History of the British Landscape), published by Routledge in 1990, analysed connections between the natural world and artists who have interpreted it from the 18th century to the present.1213 This was followed in 1999 by the publication European Heritage Planning and Management, edited with Gregory Ashworth (translated into Lithuanian in 2008).14 The 2001 book, Heritage: Management, Identity and Interpretation, provided what Howard called "a guide to a sensible way of locating and organizing [heritage knowledge]".1516

The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity17 was Howard's next notable work, being an edited publication of 25 essays by contributors representing a range of academic perspectives on heritage. An Introduction to Landscape (2011) proposed to interrogate the reader's understanding of the term "landscape," whilst providing a range of definitions used among various individuals and cultures.1819 This was followed by two works focusing on national identities: Reclaiming the Greek Landscape20 and Landscape and Sustainable Development: the French perspective.21

Howard's most recent and widely-cited work is The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies (2018), now in a second edition.2223


References

References

  1. "An English Life in Landscape: Watching Landscape Research over Half a Century". Bournemouth University. 5 June 2025. Retrieved 5 June 2025.
  2. "Visiting Fellow Peter Howard". Bournemouth University. 5 June 2025. Retrieved 5 June 2025.
  3. Howard, Peter (2002). "Editorial". International Journal of Heritage Studies. 8 (1): 7. doi:10.1080/13527250220119893 – via Taylor & Francis.
  4. Howard, Peter (2018). "Perceptual Lenses". In Howard, Peter; Thompson, Ian; Waterton, Emma; Atha, Mick (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 51–61.
  5. Howard, Peter (25 February 2022). "An English Life in Landscape: Watching Landscape Research over Half a Century". Journal of Landscape Ecology. 15 (1): 47–60. doi:10.2478/jlecol-2022-0003 – via Sciendo.
  6. Howard. "An English Life...". Journal of Landscape Ecology. 15 (1): 48.
  7. Howard, Peter (January 1982). "Vision: Lutyens--The Master Environmentalist". The Geographical Magazine. 54 (1): 9 – via exacteditions.
  8. https://landscaperesearch.org/
  9. https://landscaperesearch.org/journal/
  10. https://topia.fr/2019/03/21/8996/
  11. "Peter Howard". ResearchGate. Retrieved 5 June 2025.
  12. Howard, Peter (1990). Landscapes: the artists' vision (History of the British Landscape). London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415007757.
  13. Romey, William D. (April 1993). "Landscapes: The Artist's Vision". Forest & Conservation History. 37 (2): 96 – via Oxford Academic.
  14. Howard, Peter; Ashworth, Gregory, eds. (1999). European Heritage Planning and Management. Oxford: Intellect. ISBN 9781841500058.
  15. Howard, Peter (2003). Heritage: Management, Interpretation, Identity. London and New York: Continuum. pp. vii. ISBN 0-8264-5897-1.
  16. Young, Christopher (2004). "Peter Howard: Heritage: Management, Interpretation, Identity". European Journal of Archaeology. 7 (3): 326–328 – via Cambridge Core.
  17. Graham, Brian; Howard, Peter, eds. (2008). The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate (published 24 April 2008). ISBN 978-0-7546-4922-9.
  18. Howard, Peter (2011). An Introduction to Landscape. Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-1-4094-0384-5.
  19. Howard, Peter J. (5 June 2025). An Introduction to Landscape. doi:10.4324/9781315262680. ISBN 978-1-315-26268-0. Retrieved 5 June 2025. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  20. Howard, Peter; Papayannis, Thymio (2012). Reclaiming the Greek Landscape. Athens: Mediterranean Institute for Nature and Anthropos (Med-INA). ISBN 978-960-89972-3-3.
  21. Luginbuhl, Yves; Howard, Peter; Terrasson, Daniel (2015). Landscapes and Sustainable Development: the French perspective (Revised ed.). London: Routledge (published 31 March 2021). ISBN 9780367787370.
  22. Howard, Peter; Thompson, Ian; Waterton, Emma; Atha, Mick, eds. (2018). The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies (2nd ed.). London: Routledge (published 18 December 2020). ISBN 978-0-3677-3375-9.
  23. "The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies". University of York. 3 August 2022. Retrieved 5 June 2025.