Association of European Schools of Planning
 | |
| Network of European universities | |
| Founded | 1987 |
| Headquarters | Dortmund, Germany |
| Website | www.aesop-planning.eu |
The Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) is a network of European universities, their departments and affiliated schools that are engaged in teaching and research in the fields of urban and regional planning.
Foundation
The formal charter of establishment of AESOP was signed in Dortmund, Germany in 1987. In 1992, it was formally registered as a non-profit association under Belgian law.
Aims
The association aims to promote the development of the teaching curricula and research among its member institutions through mutual dialogue, communication, exchange, and dissemination of research practices.
Presidents
Klaus Kunzmann (1987-1990)
Louis Albrecht (1990-1992)
Giorgio Piccinato (1992-1994)
Patsy Healey (1994-1996)
Marcel Bazin (1996-1998)
Tadeusz Markowski (1998-2000)
Hans Mastop (2000-2002)
Alessandro Balducci (2002-2004)
Simin Davoudi (2004-2006)
Peter Ache (2006-2008)
Wilem Salet (2008-2010)
Kristina L. Nilsson (2010-2012)
Gert de Roo (2012-2014)
Francesco Lo Piccolo (2014-2016)
Anna Geppert (ongoing)
Events
AESOP aims to achieve its goals through the organization of an heterogeneous set of events: - AESOP Annual Congress, focussing on European, national, regional and local spatial planning issues; - Annual AESOP Heads of Schools Meeting, discussing planning education and curricula related issues; - Annual AESOP PhD Workshop, usually preceding the annual congress and fostering interaction and learning among Ph.D. Candidates focussing on planning related issues; - European Urban Summer School, aiming to bring together young professionals and experienced academics and practitioners from across Europe to discuss relevant planning issues. - AESOP Lecture Series to find possible answers to present-day and emerging challenges that face planning and planners as a modern discipline in a new role in our contemporary complex and dynamic society.
Young Academic Network
In 2003-2004, AESOP launched the AESOP Young Academics (YA) Network. The AESOP YA were founded as a working group in particular addressed at planners who have only recently entered the academic world: PhD Students, Postdoctoral researchers or people starting in academic positions. The activities of the AESOP YA Network are complementary to other activities that are being deployed within AESOP as a whole.
The core aims of the YA is make AESOP a challenging environment for young academics. Since 2005, the YA organize their own YA conference, aimed to attract a small group of young researchers. The YA conference does not ask any fee to its participants, this to help young academics to present their work and ideas as easy as possible. Next to the conference, the YA launched their own open-acces peer-reviewed international academics journal, called PlaNext.[1]
YA Coordination Team
The YA network and their activities are represented by the YA Coordination Team (CT), composed by five democratice chosen members out of the network. Every year half of the Coordinationa team, two or three, are replaced. Every coordination team chooses among themselves a chair of the young academics. The chair also has a seat in the Executive Committee of AESOP, representing the young academics within the association.
Chairs of the YA CT
- Roelof Verhage (2003-2004)
- Nikos Karadimitriou (2004-2005)
- Richard J. Nunes (2005-2006)
- Giancarlo Cotella (2006-2007)
- Beatrix Haselberger (2007-2008)
- Vojtěch Novotný (2008-2009)
- Ceren Sezer (2009-2010)
- Antonio Raciti (2010-2012)
- Verena Peer (2012-2013)
- Lauren Ugur (2013 – 2015)
- Nadia Caruso (2015-2016)
- Karel Van den Berghe (2016-2017)
See also
- European Spatial Development Perspective
- European Union
- The European Spatial Development Planning network