Başak Akarsu a research assistant and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Istanbul Technical University. She completed her bachelor's degrees in Landscape Architecture and Architecture, and her master's degree in Landscape Architecture, at Istanbul Technical University (ITU). Her master's research examined the cultural landscapes of Southeastern Anatolia through the lens of landscape, climate, and culture, developing an interdisciplinary framework to investigate the complex interactions between environmental conditions, cultural processes, and regional landscape identities. Her ongoing doctoral research seeks to develop a theoretical framework for the concept of landscape trauma, exploring its intersections with social trauma and examining how these relationships are manifested, represented, and interpreted through landscapes across different geographical and cultural contexts. As part of her thesis research, she is currently a visiting researcher at Newcastle University’s School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, where she continues her work on landscape trauma, collective memory, and affective geographies from an interdisciplinary perspective. Her interdisciplinary work explores the relationships between landscape, memory, affect, and socio-environmental change through the lenses of landscape architecture and human geography. Focusing on landscape trauma, collective memory, and affective geographies, she examines how traumatic experiences are spatially inscribed, represented, and remembered within everyday environments. Her research combines narrative, visual, and cartographic approaches to develop new methodologies for interpreting the spatial traces of social and environmental disruptions.