IPELSEE studied the transformations of land and landscapes in South East Europe (SEE). It paid particular attention to the parallel processes of postsocialist transformation, different stages and paths of EU integration, and the restructuring of global capital flows. It also included regional imperial histories that shaped land use and land ownership before Yugoslav socialism. Its main contribution is an approach to land as differently assembled human-soil relations: as a policy object, an everyday experience, and a site of political imaginaries. It had two aims: (1) to develop an international political-ecology framework capable of studying human–soil relations across multiple scales, and (2) to use that framework to better understand transformations in rural and agricultural land use in South East Europe. While political science and international relations have focused on issues of power, sovereignty, and territory, they have habitually ignored the human-soil relations that make the land they talk about and the rural areas where those relations are grounded. IPELSEE tackled this gap to provide a more grounded understanding of the intersection of international politics and political ecology of land and landscapes. It used well-trodden methods (interviews, participatory observation, document analysis) and innovative methodologies (participatory mapping) to investigate human-soil relations and their transformations. Beyond academic contributions to international political ecology within IR, interpretive methods in IR and PolSci, and SEE area studies, communication activities focused on research regions to counter the stigmatisation of rural areas and shed light on practices of land use and land ownership that are not only used traditionally but can also contribute to more sustainable and just land use in the future.
