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Lotte Dijkstra

About me

Lotte Dijkstra is a landscape architect, researcher, storyteller and artist. Her interdisciplinary work explores intersectional environmentalism, radical community engagement and place-based creative methods in landscape architecture and urban forestry. Through research and teaching at Newcastle University and her company Studio PLACES, she facilitates and delivers community engagement between cities and their more-than-human citizens. She writes and edits stories on landscape, architecture and the built environment for academia, practice and the public.

 

Photo by Oluwaseunfunmi Onafuwa Solanke (2024)

Project Title

Urban Forest Stories: Fostering intersectional environmental belonging through storytelling

Project Description

The urban forest is nature close to home for many city dwellers. Yet, engagement with and access to the urban forest is unequal. Quantitative research indicates that human age, ethnicity, health, and socioeconomic deprivation exacerbate this unequal access. Further research suggests that equitable access can only be achieved when three specific dimensions of access are addressed. Current research focuses on achieving the dimensions of distributive and procedural access rather than addressing the dimension of a sense of access. This sense of access can also be understood as ‘belonging’. A key question is how such a sense of belonging in urban forests can be defined and fostered. 

This PhD by Creative Practice aims to explore how to foster intersectional environmental belonging in urban forests. The methods used are based around a participatory storytelling practice, informed by intersectional environmental principles of advocating for the protection of both people and the planet. Storytelling sessions with more-than-human communities in Gateshead Riverside Park in the North East of England provide embodied invitations to engage with place-based, temporal, and more-than-human belonging on a collaborative and iterative basis.

The research outputs include an anthology of collaborative place-based Urban Forest Stories, an exhibition, and a guide with prompts and practices for Urban Forest Storytelling. The key findings from the research are twofold. First, intersectional environmental belonging can be defined as both a concept and a process, which can be practised through shared experiences. Second, intersectional environmental storytelling enables participants to explore and foster shared experiences of belonging, provided that these storytelling sessions invite participants to engage with the urban forest through interscalar, intersectional, and interconnected prompts. This understanding of and approach to intersectional environmental belonging can inform radical more-than-human community engagement practices in support of fair, inclusive, healthy and resilient urban forest planning, design and management.

Supervisors

Dr Usue Ruiz Arana

Clive Davies

Prof Maggie Roe 

Qualifications

Fellow of Higher Education Academy (2024)

Master of Science in Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences: Landscape Architecture track, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands (2017)

Bachelor of Science in Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands (2014)

Papers and Publications

selection

Books

Book Chapters

  • Ruiz Arana, U, Dijkstra, CM. ‘Stepping in, stepping out: Practising more-than-human landscape architecture through careful listening and language’. In: Overstreet, K, Schwabe, SA, eds. Cohabiting with Care: Encounters in More-than-Human Landscapes. Forthcoming.
  • Dijkstra, CM. ‘Arboreal Citizen Participation. More-than-human agency in urban planning, design and management’. In: O’Neill, S. ed. Tree Lines. Arboreal Agency in the Creative Arts. Brill. Forthcoming.
  • Dijkstra, CM. ‘Langs het groen, door de stad’ [Along green, through the city]. In: Lensvelt, N. ed. Groen erfgoed in de stad [Green heritage in the city] 2025. Nai010 Publishers, pp. 152-169.

Conference Proceedings

  • Dijkstra, CM. Radical Community Engagement: Storytelling as method to enable recognitional access to urban green space [invited speaker]. Arboricultural Association Green Equity Symposium. 13-14 April 2026. Stonehouse, UK.
  • Dijkstra, CM. Urban Forest Time: An intersectional environmental approach to temporal belonging in urban forests. Time & Justice. Temporal Interrogations into Social-Ecological Justice. Young Scholars’ Conference. 8-10 October 2025. Hamburg, Germany.
  • Dijkstra, CM. Radical Community Engagement: A practical approach to intersectional environmental justice in urban forestry [keynote]. European Forum on Urban Forestry. 3-7 June 2025. Zürich, Switzerland.
  • Dijkstra, CM. Radical Arboreal Engagement: More-than-human community engagement in urban forest planning, design and management. 5th Urban Tree Diversity Conference. 24-25 October 2025. Madrid, Spain.
  • Davies, C, Dijkstra, CM, Borelli, S, Salbitano, F, Conigliaro, M, Wallace, C. Accessible Urban Forest Education: Introducing the FAO elearning course ‘Introduction to Urban and Peri-Urban Forestry’. 2nd World Forum on Urban Forestry. 16-20 October 2023. Washington DC, USA.
  • Dijkstra, CM. Tree Tales: Workshop intersectional belonging in practice. 2nd World Forum on Urban Forestry. 16-20 October 2023. Washington DC, USA.
  • Dijkstra, CM. Mapping Urban Forest Places: A creative approach to exploring people’s awareness and imagination of urban forest places in North East England. 3rd World Conference on Forests for Public Health. 4-7 October 2023. Sherbrooke, Canada.
  • Dijkstra, CM. Urban Forest Stories from Singapore: Exploring human-nature senses of belonging in the ‘City in Nature’. Memory Studies Association Conference. 3-7 July 2023. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.

Exhibitions, installations and performances

Thesis

Research Group Memberships

Funding

  • Newcastle University Forshaw Award 2022-2024
  • Newcastle University Institute of Social Science HaSS Pioneer Award 2023
  • Newcastle University Jobs on Campus Internship funding 2023
  • Newcastle University Engagement and Place Fund (with Dr Usue Ruiz Arana and Stef Leach)

Contact

C.M.Dijkstra2@newcastle.ac.uk