ILCA is a 24 month research training project involving international and inter-sector mobility within Europe. To undertake the project, the researcher will move from Greece to the United Kingdom and move between sectors, transferring from her current position in the third sector, with the landscape and environment NGO Med-INA, to the academic sector at the University of Glasgow.The project is based on the idea that the integrated characterisation of a landscape - and particularly of the landscape’s dynamic historical evolution - is necessary to fully realise the potential of sustainable development in specific localities. Here, sustainable development is understood as a long-term and integrated approach to the maintenance and generation of social, cultural, economic and environmental gains. Systematic appraisal of the landscape's dynamic history, and of the meaning of that history to people in the present, produces a long-term perspective on the landscape's character. In turn, this perspective provides a solid foundation for creating sustainable and integrated governance policies and strategies.The project will conceptualise, design, test and evaluate method for landscape character appraisal. This method will be innovative in its holistic, multi-disciplinary and participatory approach. The ILCA method will provide a cost-effective means of describing and evaluating the historic evolution of landscapes and of connecting that historic knowledge with processes of landscape governance. The ILCA method will provide practitioners, stakeholders and decision-makers with a knowledge base which underpins the creation and implementation of policies and actions consistent with the objective of sustainable development. The ILCA method will progress landscape characterisation methodology, innovating to produce a more integrated and participatory approach which better connects knowledge about long-term historic dynamics with planning and decision-making for the future.