From Instants to Eons: Time in Environment and Environmental History
International Conference organized by the Centre for Environmental History in Estonia (KAJAK)
Tallinn, 25-26 March 2013

Deadline for application: 20 December 2012

Environment and environmental history feature countless diverse and often hardly reconcilable time scales. While “time” is probably one of the least questioned concepts in experimental science, being the basis of objectivity in measurements, it becomes infinitely diversified in the phenomenal world. Evolutionary, ecological, geological, cyclic, perennial, organismic, human (that is, specifically cultural) times are all indispensable elements of every environment and environmental historical treatment. At any given moment, the environment is shaped by the mostly short lived organisms acting here and now and long-term processes like evolution, ecological and climatic cycles or the birth and disappearance of human civilizations. This diversity in times in environment and history poses also several methodological challenges, especially concerning the research material and metalanguage. The understanding of time and the choice of time scales is one the most fundamental components of environmental historical narratives and analysis.

Please send an abstract (300 words) and your CV to sillaso [at] tlu.ee.

Further details are available in the full call for papers.