This project is an international consortium of six institutions. The project is called “Dryland agriculture and Land use; past, present and future resilience” [AGRI-DRY] and has to train 10 early-stage researchers doctoral candidates (DCs) in new interdisciplinary approaches to examine three interlinked research questions: 1. How and why have agricultural systems emerged and developed in the light of evolving needs and changing environmental conditions? 2. What were the impacts of these systems on modern and ancient land use and ecosystems, and on our climate systems historically, and how do they continue to impact these today? 3. What can be learnt from ancient and traditional agricultural systems for policy and practical applications around current food production, social and ecological resilience, and climate mitigation? The candidates are hosted in 6 institutions in Europe (Denmark, Italy, Scotland and Spain) and southern Africa (Botswana and South Africa)

The aims of the project/network are to:
1. Understand and evaluate how ancient and traditional agricultural and land-use management practices have the potential to transform sustainable food production, current land use, biodiversity management and resilience in dryland landscapes;
2. Identify solutions around crop and land management practices based on our findings to make recommendations to community leaders and policy makers towards developing more sustainable food production systems to build future social and ecological resilience;
3. Develop the next generation of scholars within the research area of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to create a network of African and European ESRs conversant in advanced inter- and multidisciplinary scientific approaches, focused on the study of long-term perspectives to traditional agriculture, to address future research on sustainable food production and biocultural diversity.