On Friday, 22 May 2026, Sandra Jasper (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) will join us for a NICA Masterclass on “Wastelands and Urban Ecologies”.
Urban wastelands are spaces of scientific discovery and collective memory. Ruins, deindustrialized zones, former railway yards or military sites, and other seemingly abandoned spaces have produced a profusion of plants and animals, and have afforded a place for other-than-human life in the conception of urban spaces’ inhabitation. This masterclass places a particular focus on spontaneous ecologies and their relation to marginal urban spaces. We will discuss a range of cultural and scientific responses to wastelands that reveal new insights on their re-valorization as biodiversity hotspots and public space. We will interrogate the efficacy of current nature conservation policies and other legal tools to counter the loss of marginal spaces of nature in the context of speculative development. In light of this, we will also query ideas around the malleability of urban nature reflected in recent efforts to adapt cities to climate change, increase public health, compensate for development, or ‘put nature to work’ for its metabolic capacities to clean up pollution.
We will also discuss creative approaches to the study of wastelands and urban ecologies including documentary filmmaking and sound recording, and discuss the potentials and limits of combining natural scientific and social scientific methods.
Reading
- Sandra Jasper, “Traversing Wastelands: Reflections on an Abandoned Railway Yard,” in C. O’Callaghan and C. Di Feliciantonio, eds., The New Urban Ruins (Bristol: Policy Press, 2021), 53–72.
- Sandra Jasper, “Abandoned Infrastructures and Nonhuman Life,” in Society & Space (Forum on Ecologizing Infrastructure: Infrastructural Ecologies), November 30,
- Matthew Gandy and Sandra Jasper, “The City as a Botanical Field,” in The Botanical City (Berlin: jovis, 2020), 6–14.
The PDFs can also be accessed here: https://surfdrive.surf.nl/s/HFqokyXs7MdmqwH
Credits
1 ECTS – reading preparation, attendance and active participation in the discussions
The session takes place on Friday 22 May 2026, 10.00-12.00 in room 0.16 (E-lab), Turfdraagsterpad 9, Amsterdam. For more information and registration, please contact Linda Kopitz (l.kopitz@vu.nl). Following the Masterclass, Sandra Jasper will also give a guest lecture as part of the ASCA Cities Seminar on “Sound Cities”.
Sandra Jasper is a Professor and Chair of Geography at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, where she leads the Society-Environment Research Group. Her research interests are in cultural, urban, and environmental geography with a particular focus on urban nature and biodiversity, wastelands and infrastructure, sonic geographies, and feminist theory. She has co-authored and co-produced the documentary film Natura Urbana: The Brachen of Berlin.Her new AHRC-DFG funded project Networked through Sound: Listening to 20th Century Wildlife Sound Archivesexamines the history of European wildlife sound recording.