Three scientists from the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute in Aberdeen have scooped a national journal award for their research into the effect of movement on people’s appreciation of landscapes. Dr Katrina Brown, Dr Rachel Dilley and Dr Keith Marshall were announced today (Thursday April 16) as the winners of the Sociological Research Online SAGE Prize 2009 for their published paper Using a Head-mounted Video Camera to Understand Social Worlds and Experiences. The award will be presented to Dr Dilley at the British Sociological Association annual conference in Cardiff this evening (April 16).

The prize is awarded to the most innovative and exceptional paper published during the past year in one of the BSA’s four journals; Sociological Research Online, Sociology, Work, Employment and Society, and Cultural Sociology. Led by Dr Katrina Brown, the winning paper from the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute investigates how different ways of experiencing and moving through landscapes affect the ways in which they are valued. Researchers used head-mounted video cameras to analyse the perception of subjects during their journeys through different environments.

Professor Bill Slee, Head of the Socio-Economic Research Group at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute says, “Winning this award is fantastic recognition for the work that Katrina, Rachel and Keith have accomplished. It also reinforces the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute?s position at the forefront of research into the environmental and social impact of the way in which land is used.

“The winning paper investigated our understanding of how people actually experience landscapes and why they hold the landscape values they do. Evaluations are often made from a generalised and static position and tend to neglect the influence of what people are doing and how they are moving in the landscape. The research illustrates the need to consider perception from a moving, as well as static, point of view. Landscape-related policy decisions will hopefully be influenced by the new understanding derived from the high innovative approaches that Katrina and her team have developed.”

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The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute was founded in 1930 and is an international centre for research and consultancy on the environmental and social consequences of rural land uses. With an annual income from research and consultancy of over £11m, the Institute is the largest interdisciplinary research organisation of its kind in Europe, and aims to provide evidence to help shape future environmental and rural-development policy on a national and international basis. For further information, visit www.macaulay.ac.uk .