Environmental History

The conference is being held on January 13 and 14 at the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge to discuss the cross disciplinary facets of the field of environmental history. It aims to study the change of environment in the past, and incorporates a number of academic disciplines including history, botany, climatology, anthropology and philosophy of science.

The conference will provide space to reflect on the achievements, diversity, and direction of environmental history, especially in its varied national, international and continental contexts. The conference will provide a mix of both new and innovative work in the field, and reflections on its methodology and disciplinary status.

Key questions addressed will include: Why is it that environmental history has sometimes fared better in other subjects than history itself? What does this significant 'new' spread of history into other disciplines tell us of the importance and nature of history? Should environmental history be considered a discrete discipline with its own institutional presence, or essentially as a cross-disciplinary endeavour, and how is it best and most successfully 'done' in its different contexts?

The conference is part of the Documenting Environmental Change project. The project was set up following a colloquium held on this theme at the University of Cambridge in September 1999. It aims to promote interdisciplinary work on historical environmental change by facilitating contacts and the exchange of information between scholars at the University of Cambridge and in the wider world.

The conference is Supported by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), the Department of Geography, and Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge.

Registration for places closes on December 30.