We set up Environmental History Workshop in 2018 to address what we felt was a lack of opportunities for UK-based environmental historians to meet and discuss research. Despite the current strength of the field, there is no annual environmental history event in the UK, and there is no regular environmental history seminar series. Instead, we are left in the ironic position of having to fly across the world to meet one another (often for the first time!) at meetings of the European Society for Environmental History, the American Society for Environmental History or the World Congress of Environmental History. Fed up of destroying the future to discuss the past, we decided an annual event was needed in the UK to, at the very least, keep a couple more planes on the ground.
Environmental historians have long received shelter in the institutional spaces of our sister disciplines. Conferences and seminar series focussing on social, economic, agricultural and landscape histories, and the histories of science and technology have warmly welcomed environmental historians working on a number of related topics. However, we haven’t had a home to call our own. Environmental History Workshop is not a retreat from these interdisciplinary conversations – they have broadened our horizons and helped shape our intellectual agendas. Rather, EHW is an attempt to construct our own small ecological niche, into which we welcome all scholars with an interest in things environmental. Our first event, focussed broadly on the theme of ‘Intersections’, is designed to create an open space for exchange reflecting this trajectory.
We intend EHW to be an annual, roving event, driven by the enthusiasm of the growing number of early career historians in our field. We are particularly keen for PhD and postdoctoral scholars to join us. If you would like to be involved in organising Environmental History Workshop, by contributing to the blog or helping organise future events, please get in touch via environmentalhistoryworkshop@gmail.com
Environmental History Workshop 