Oxford Symposium - Population, Migration, and the Environment

Invitation to the Oxford Symposium on

Population, Migration, and the Environment 

1-2 August 2016

You are invited to participate in the Oxford Symposium on Population, Migration, and the Environment.

The symposium will be held 1 and 2 August 2016 at the Rothermere American Institute, Oxford, UK.

You are invited to present a paper that encourages the exchange of interdisciplinary ideas about the main themes of the conference: world population increase, human migration, and environmental sustainability.  Alternatively, you may wish to attend as an observer or panel member.

The Symposium seeks to cover a broad agenda that includes disciplines such as economics, education, environmental studies, agriculture, law, political science, religion, and social studies. Topics for presentation may reach beyond these areas, and our website contains an extensive list of suggested topics.

Papers presented at the meeting will be subsequently peer-reviewed by external readers for possible inclusion in Symposium Books or sponsored academic journals.

Please Email Lydia at contact@oxford-population-and-environment-symposium.com if you have questions.

New book on environmental crises in Central Asia released

Environmental Crises in Central Asia: From Steppes to Seas, from Deserts to Glaciers has just been published by Routledge as part of its Studies in Environmental Communication and Media series.

The editors are Professor Eric Freedman, the Knight Chair in Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University, U.S., and Professor Mark Neuzil of the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, U.S.

The multidisciplinary book explores an array of environmental challenges in a strategically crucial part of the globe, including the impact of climate change on glacial melt, desertification, deforestation, destruction of biodiversity, hazardous wastes, water quality and supply, energy exploration, air and pesticide pollution, and environmental diseases.

Those challenges cross national borders and may affect economic, political and cultural relationships on a vast geographic scale at a time when the region’s governments are burdened by limited economic resources, weak civil society institutions and political authoritarianism.

The book emphasizes the reality that environmental conditions don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re influenced by science, politics, history, public policy, culture, economics, public attitudes and competing priorities, as well as past human decisions. In the case of Central Asia, such Soviet-era decisions include irrigation systems and physical infrastructure that are now crumbling, mine tailings that leach pollutants into soil and groundwater, and abandoned factories that are physically decrepit and contaminated with toxic chemicals.

Thus it draws on research in the social sciences, natural sciences, media studies and health by scholars and practitioners in Central Asia, Europe and the United States.

New Networking website - connect with others working in your field

David Moon and Victoria Beale at the University of York, UK, have created a networking website for people studying the environmental history of Russia and its neighbours. Our main focus is on the Post-Soviet space, the USSR, the Russian Empire and its predecessors. This is a place to discover and connect with others working in the field.

The network is for anyone who identifies themselves as an Environmental Historian, from any discipline, including academic staff/faculty, postgraduate/graduate students and independent scholars who have published in the field.

If this describes you, we invite you to add your profile to the growing number on the website. http://www.reh.spruz.com

Life in a Real Nuclear Wasteland

Strange illnesses in one of the most contaminated towns in the world challenge what we think we know about the dangers of radioactivity.

This article (2013) by Kate Brown, visiting researcher with the Network, is about people living on a contaminated river in the Russian Urals:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/04/nuclear_contamination_in_former_ussr_radioactivity_in_muslomovo_on_techa.html

Read more about Kate Brown on the UMBC website http://history.umbc.edu/facultystaff/full-time/kate-brown/

View a list of all people involved in the Network on the Network website http://www.york.ac.uk/history/research/majorprojects/russiasenvironmentalhistory/#tab-3

Eunice Blavascunas on "Signals in the Forest: Postsocialist Scientific Legitimacy in Poland's Bialowieza Forest"

A Lunchtime Colloquium at the Rachel Carson Center, Munich

05.06.2014 12:00  – 14:00 

Location: Katholische Hochschulgemeinde (KHG), Leopoldstr. 11
Credibility contests about what nature is doing are rarely won by science alone because science is a cultural activity. In Europe’s last low-land old growth forest, the Bialowieza Forest in eastern Poland, which experts do people trust when those experts speak about the compositions of plants and animals that belong there? Which experts have they trusted in the post-socialist era? Intense debates about the ontology of the forest prefigure how the forest can be managed and in this story inflect on the use of radio telemetry and western-produced media. Cultural stories about science help scholars understand the shortcuts people take in interpreting the scientific positions that fit their views as well as political, historical circumstances.

Eunice Blavascunas (College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbour, USA) will present on "Signals in the Forest: Postsocialist Scientific Legitimacy in Poland's Bialowieza Forest."

The Lunchtime Colloquium is free and open to the public.
Snacks are served at 12:00; the lecture starts at 12:30.

For more information on the Lunchtime Colloquium series, please click here.

The Country and the City: Connecting People and Their Places in Environmental History

This International Conference in Beijing is currently underway (29.05.2014 – 01.06.2014)

 

It is Co-Sponsored by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, and the Center for Ecological History, Renmin University of China

 

Do rural people live in harmony with each other and with nature? Are urban people alienated from the land and exploitative in their ecological behavior? These questions point to cultural myths that have persisted across time and space, from ancient China to modern Africa. This conference seeks to scrutinize such cultural perceptions, in the spirit of famed British cultural critic Raymond Williams, and at the same time examine the material connections that have long bound rural and urban habitats together. We are especially interested in comparative studies that cross national boundaries, in papers that bring neglected parts of the world into view, and in perspectives that extend back in time before the twentieth century.

The program (PDF, 76 KB) can be viewed on the website of the Rachel Carson Center.

An American Environmental Historian visits Russia's National Parks

A thoughtful piece by Alan Roe - a Ph.D. student of Russian Environmental History at Georgetown University.  http://www.york.ac.uk/media/history/russianenvironment/National%20Parks%20essay%20Roe%20.pdf

Conference: “Environmental History in Russia: Stages of Development & Promising Research Directions”

Call for papers for Conference: “Environmental History in Russia: Stages ofDevelopment & Promising Research Directions”, November 13-15, 2014, Elabuga (Tatarstan, Russia). Deadline for proposals is 15 July 2014.

Contact: Andrei Vinogradov via e-mail andreivinogradov@gmail.com.

Fieldtrip to Kiev and Chernobyl postponed

Unfortunately, due to the current situation in Ukraine, we feel it is inappropriate for the Network to visit the country and hence we have postponed the Network's field trip to Kiev and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. We hope to be able to carry out this fieldtrip at a future date.

Network poster

A poster providing information about the Network is now available to download from the website at http://www.york.ac.uk/history/research/majorprojects/russiasenvironmentalhistory/#tab-7 under the subheading "Network Publicity"

Solovetsky – from spirituality to coercion. And back...

A photo essay on the Network trip to the Solovetsky Islands last August, produced by participant Ion Von Sucala, is now available to view on the website. You can access this, and other essays and information about the trip, at http://www.york.ac.uk/history/research/majorprojects/russiasenvironmentalhistory/events/#tab-2 

Health and Safety for Chernobyl trip

We have now prepared a Health and Safety Briefing for participants on the Network trip to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in July 2014. It is available from the Resources and Publicity page of the website.

This was written by Victoria Beale (Network Facilitator) in conjunction with Ian Haslam (Head of Radiation Protection at the University of Leeds following a meeting between Victoria, Ian, David Moon (Lead Investigator) and  Chris Teeling (Health and Fire Safety Officer at the University of York).

York Talk "Interactions in environmental history" summary

The summary handout from David Moon's 'York Talk' on "Interactions in Environmental History" (8/1/14) is now available from the Resources and Publicity page of the website.

Network showcased at 'York Talks'

On Wednesday 8th January the work of the Network will come under the spotlight in the University of York's inspiring public showcase - 'York Talks' http://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/public-lectures/spring-2014/york-talk/.

Styled on the highly successful ‘TED’ Talks, 'York Talks' will highlight some of the University's most innovative and challenging research in an accessible, fast paced series of 15-minute talks.The aim is to share and explain our research to a wide audience of academics, researchers and the general public.

The event, the first of its kind at the University, illuminates the work of the University's Anniversary Professors, all of whom are leading edge academics appointed in 2013 to mark York’s 50th year. It will be opened by the new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Koen Lamberts in his first public event.

As one of the Anniversary Professors, David Moon will be presenting the work of the Leverhulme International Network in a talk entitled "Interactions in environmental history".

Essays on the Network Trip to the Solovetskii Islands

A number of Network members who took part in the trip to the Solovetskii Islands in August 2013 have contributed essays on the trip to the Network website. These can be viewed at:

http://www.york.ac.uk/history/research/majorprojects/russiasenvironmentalhistory/#tab-7

Prof David Moon presents Network to Leverhulme Trust workshop

On Friday 18 October, David Moon made a brief presentation on the network at a workshop on 'Leverhulme Trust research funding', addressed by Professor Gordon Marshall, the Director of the Leverhulme Trust. This took place in the Humanities Research Centre at York University.

http://www.york.ac.uk/hrc/events/2013-14/autumn-2013/proposition-leverhulme/

More photos from the Solovetskii Islands and St Petersburg

Ion Voicu Sucala is a Ph.D. student at the University of Glasgow researching “The selection of the organisational elite in Communist Romania”. He is a visiting researcher with the Network and has published many of his photos from the recent Network trip to St Petersburg and the Solovetskii Islands on his blog http://argo-traveller.blogspot.co.uk

In particular his photos from the Solovetskii Islands can be found at
http://argo-traveller.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/solovki-islands-august-2013.html and
http://argo-traveller.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/solovki-archipelago-august-2013.html

and his photos from St Petersburg are at http://argo-traveller.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/st-petersburg-august-2013.html

More photos from the trip can be found on the Network website at http://www.york.ac.uk/history/research/majorprojects/russiasenvironmentalhistory/solovkigallery/

St Petersburg - photo by Ion Voicu Sucala

Nicholas Breyfogle's Blog on the Solovki trip

Network Partner Prof Nicholas Breyfogle from Ohio State University has created the blog Enironment–Water–History: Explorations in Ecological History which features a series of posts on the Network's recent trip to St Petersburg and the Solovetskii Islands. You can find it at https://u.osu.edu/breyfogle.1/

To the Blockade Stickleback
The shelling has fallen silent and the bombing too,
But, to this day, praise is sounded
To the blockade little fish
That helped the people to survive
                        — M. G. Aminova
                        –plaque erected for the 300-year anniversary of Kronstadt.

Photo by Nicholas Breyfogle

Field Trip to the Solovetskii Islands - August 2013

Monastery on Solovki - photo by Abi Sutton

In August, Network partners and invited specialists participated in a field trip to the Solovetskii Islands in the White Sea. These islands have a unique flora and fauna and have been inhabited since pre-history, hosting, among others, a fishing community, an Orthodox monastery and the first Soviet labour camp (gulag). The islands are designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and offer rich materials to investigate the relationship between state, society, culture, religion and nature, and the role of science and technology, in Russia’s Arctic region.


The programme for the trip, together with essays and photos by participants, can be found at:
www.york.ac.uk/history/research/majorprojects/russiasenvironmentalhistory/events/#tab-2 

Ohio State University

This article from Ohio State University celebrates the formation of the Network and the contribution of Professor Nicholas Breyfogle.

http://artsandsciences.osu.edu/news/breaking-fresh-ground-environmental-history-takes-a-new-direction