Landscape Vocabulary in the languages of Iran: Conceptualising Ecosystem across the Zagros mountain and Southern desert ecoregions

Advances uncovering the links between language and cognition, along with recent research in ecolinguistics, have revealed that speech communities may conceptualise landscape features and spatial coordinates in different ways based on culture-specific categories, beliefs, and customs. Core lexical items for landscape elements, also embedded in place names, may reflect diverging mental images, worldviews, and knowledge systems. LandVoICE compares and contrasts landscape vocabulary in selected languages of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family and neighbouring non-Iranian languages spoken in two distinct regions of Iran: the Zagros mountains and the Southern desert/semi-desert. The project combines approaches in Iranian philology and lexicology with analytic methods inspired by ethnophysiography, an interdisciplinary framework for studying culture-bound human cognition of the world we inhabit. LandVoICE supplements data assembled from existing databases and published literature with fresh materials collected through collaborative research with local communities. Among its key objectives is the development of culturally appropriate technological tools (mapping systems, ontology-based GIS) to visualise research findings and account for local landscape-related knowledge, engage communities in ecosystem conservation, and support the preservation of the intangible heritage associated with landscapes. Qualified supervision of Prof. Ela Filippone (Tuscia University, Viterbo, Italy: beneficiary), Prof. Erik Anonby (Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada: outgoing host) and Prof. Matteo De Chiara (INALCO, Paris, France: secondment host), in synergy with research partners and training providers at host institutions, will allow the researcher to develop core scientific and technical skills in open science and digital cartography. The MSCA experience will prepare the fellow to compete for a tenure-track position and expand her career prospects within and beyond academia.