Call for Papers
First Baltic Conference on the Environmental Humanities and Social Sciences (BALTEHUMS)

October 8-9, 2018
Academic Center for Natural Sciences, Latvian University, Riga, Latvia

The interest in interdisciplinary cooperation between humanities, arts and social sciences in the study of environment has been constantly rising all over Europe during the last 20 years. This holds also true for the three Baltic countries Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

First Baltic Conference on the Environmental Humanities and Social Sciences (BALTEHUMS) aims to bring together environment-inspired scholars from different disciplines (anthropology, arts, ecology, folkloristics, geography, history, literature, semiotics, psychology etc), in order to
o advance environmental topics within the humanities, arts and social sciences;
o bring together researchers from different backgrounds and discuss common themes;
o create a Baltic network of interdisciplinary studies on environment;
o discover ways of developing further cooperation in research, teaching, and outreach.

In order to map the grounds of the emerging community, the conference is open to all topics that focus on environment in humanities, arts and social sciences: food, resources, landscape, pollution, water, recycling, power plants, representation of nature, environment and social movements, human-animal studies, environmental ethics etc. Under ‘environment’ we do not mean only ‘nature’, but also built environment and cultural and industrial spaces linked to non-human nature and natural resources at large.

The conference welcomes contributions from all scholars who work on environmental humanities, arts and social sciences of the Baltic region, independently of where they live and work. We also welcome those scholars who reside in the Baltics and are interested in the field but whose work focusses on some other geographic location.

We welcome contributions in all recognised academic formats (20 min presentations; posters, roundtables) but are also open to suggestions for newer, more dynamic formats like shorter ‘provocations’ for works in progress or artistic interventions (á 5-10 mins). Please send an abstract (for classical presentations) or a short note on why you are interested in the event and a possible title for your short intervention by March 31, 2018 to Kati Lindström ( kati.lindstrom@abe.kth.se )

Please spread the word about the conference to all your colleagues and friends! Whether the conference will be one or two-day event will be decided after assessing the submissions.

With kind regards,
The organising committee:
Dr. Anita Zariņa & Dr. Kristīne Abolina, University of Latvia
Dr. Kati Lindström, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Dr. Kadri Tüür & Prof. Ulrike Plath, Tallinn University
Dr. Anda Baklāne, Latvian Library

For the fifth year in a row, the ESEH Board has decided to issue a Call for Proposals for Funding for small workshops and conferences to increase support for environmental history activities in Europe. The Board intends to award 500€ to up to two proposals. Environmental history workshops and conferences of no more than 100 participants which will be held in Europe during 2018 and are organized by an ESEH member are eligible.

A proposal of up to 2 pages should include (1) the name, date, location and theme of the conference/workshop, (2) an overview of the program, (3) a projected number and type of attendees, (4) an overview of the total budget, other financial sources, and a description of how the 500€ would benefit the activity, and (5) a short biographical paragraph about the organiser (who must be an ESEH member).

The deadline is March 31, 2018. Submit proposals to secretary@eseh.org.

History Division, School of Arts Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Humanities, University of Manchester, UK

The History Division seeks to appoint a Presidential Fellow specialising in environmental history. Applications are welcome from researchers working on any historical period or geographical area, whose research is concerned with the environment, broadly defined. The successful applicant will join a school-wide environmental history research community that has strengths in the history of water, ‘natural’ disasters, maritime contacts, environment and health, and histories of the body. Preference may be given to candidates whose research can contribute to one or more of these themes. This is a permanent position. Closing date 3 April 2018.

More details are available here: https://www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/displayjob.aspx?jobid=14696

The International Union of Forest History Organizations (IUFRO 9.03.01 Economic and Social Forest history and IUFRO 9.03.02 Forest and Culture) jointly with the Austrian Forest Association/Working party Forest History and Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences  invite papers for the international conference “European Forests – Our Cultural Heritage”, to be held in St. Georgen am Längsee, Austria on December 4-7, 2018.

Deadline for abstracts: June 30, 2018.

Please find the complete CfP below:

 

The Faculty of Science and Medicine of the University of Fribourg / Switzerland and the Department of Geosciences
invite applications for a position of an Assistant Professor in Environmental Humanities at the Faculty of Science and Medicine.

Qualified applicants must have an outstanding track record of successful independent research in the field of socio-ecological transformation. The successful candidate is expected to develop an internationally recognized competitive research programme sustained by external funding. Teaching experience at university level in the field of Environmental Humanities is expected.
The closing date for applications is 15 March 2018.

Information about the Department of Geosciences, facilities and curriculum are available at http://www.unifr.ch/environment/de and http://www.unifr.ch/geoscience/.

The European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) is pleased to announce the call for committees which would like to organise the ESEH Summer School in 2018, according to the Constitution of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) (http://eseh.org/about-eseh/eseh-constitution) and Organization of Summer Schools (http://eseh.org/event/summer-school/summer-schools-benefits-requirements/).

Guidelines for applicants:

(1) There has to be a clear environmental history focus in the planned programme of the Summer School (SSCH). A combination of classwork with fieldwork is strongly recommended. The ESEH Summer school committee (SSC) will be happy to help you choose an appropriate environmental history topic, which should be neither too narrow nor too broad.

(2) One of the important tasks of the ESEH is to strengthen the international knowledge transfer, mobility and international networking among promising young environmental historians, thus the summer school must be truly international, it cannot involve scholars from only one country or one language group. As such, instructions should be in English. The school should potentially be open to members of all countries, preferably with a majority of participants being Europeans. You can contact the ESEH Summer school committee to help you identify potential lecturers.

(3) The SSCH must be a PhD-level course, although recent PhD graduates and advanced Master’s students may be invited to attend. The duration of the summer school as well as the number of included students and teachers depend on preferences of organisers.

(4) There can be no fees for participants and they have to be provided with free or almost free accommodation.

(5) Confirmed official ESEH support for a summer school may help obtaining funding, thus organising committees can submit their applications prior to having secure funding. Please submit your proposal only if it is highly likely that the entire financial construction will be covered as planned.

The selected committee will receive the advisory support of the ESEH, the school will also be supported with a total of 500 EUR, and the summer school will be advertised on the ESEH website as well as through the president newsletter. The selected committee will also have the right and obligation to use the ESEH logo in announcements, flyers and websites related to the selected summer school.

Deadline for 1^st round of applications: March 2, 2018 (see below Application for recognition of your summer school as an ESEH Summer School in Environmental History)

During the month of March, the ESEH Board will, in cooperation with the ESEH Summer school committee, select the best 2018 summer school proposal and inform all applicants of the final selection. Afterwards, the ESEH Summer school committee will be happy to advise you regarding the call for participants, and will also advertise the selected summer school on the ESEH website.

In case no summer school was selected in the 1^st round or there is funding available for a second summer school in 2018:

Deadline for 2^nd round of applications: May 15, 2018 (see below Application for recognition of your summer school as an ESEH Summer School in Environmental History)

During the first half of June, the ESEH Board will, in cooperation with the ESEH Summer school committee, select the best 2018 summer school proposal and inform all applicants of the final selection. Afterwards, the ESEH Summer school committee will be happy to advise you regarding the call for participants, and will also advertise the selected summer school on the ESEH website.

Please apply through submission of the Application form  to prof. Inês Amorim, the chair of the ESEH Summer school committee, via e-mail inesamorimflup[at]gmail.com or iamorim[at] letras.up.pt.

In case you have any further questions, the ESEH summer school committee will be happy to answer you and to clarify any needed detail.

Applications are invited for a Trans-Atlantic Summer Institute (TASI) to be held 18-29 June 2018 at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, on the subject of “Transforming Environments in Europe and North America: Narratives, Histories, Cultures.” The institute is designed to help graduate students in German and European Studies frame and develop their dissertation projects to better address the past, present, and future of global environmental problems, along with the discourses and cultures that shape and are shaped by these problems.

The TASI is co-sponsored by the Center for German & European Studies at the University of Minnesota and the University of Birmingham. Core faculty are Charlotte A. Melin (U of Minnesota), Daniel J. Philippon (U of Minnesota), and Frank Uekötter (U of Birmingham), and guest speakers include Heather Sullivan (Trinity U), Seth Peabody (St. Olaf College), and Judith Pajo (Pace U).

Successful applicants will receive financial support to cover most expenses related to the two-week institute, including tuition, housing, and most meals; access to library and archival materials and Internet resources; and partial travel support. Preference will be given to advanced graduate students working on dissertation projects related to environmental literature, history, and/or culture in Germany and Europe at a North American or European university.

Additional information and complete application materials are available on the TASI website:

https://cla.umn.edu/cges/programs-exchanges/trans-atlantic-summer-institute

Questions? Contact cges@umn.edu

Gender remains an under-developed area of inquiry in environmental history. Despite Carolyn Merchant’s provocative 1990 article on gender and environment in the Journal of American History, little has happened to address this fact. This workshop aims to bring together scholars working in this area in order to advance the study of gender in environmental history. We hope to attract submissions which cover a range of time periods and diverse geographical areas.
Furthermore, we hope that participants will engage with some of the theoretical challenges of gendering environmental history.

For more information, please read the attached CfP or check out the event website.

The deadline for proposals is 15 February 2018.  Please send abstracts of 300 words outlining your topic and the contribution of your paper to the field of environmental history sent to both k.holmes@latrobe.edu.au and ruth.morgan@monash.edu.

 

Application deadline extended to January 15th, 2018!

 

The Polar Museum at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of

Cambridge, is delighted to be hosting a BSHS Engagement Fellowship for

a postgraduate student in the first half of 2018. The Engagement

Fellow will deliver a project to share stories of climate change and

its impacts.

 

Supported by the British Society for the History of Science, this post

supports our aim of ensuring we don’t just deliver messages about

climate change through contemporary science communication, but instead

through a range of types of interpretation including arts and

humanities based research.

 

We would like to suggest two options for the successful candidate,

however we are open to other climate history proposals:

 

1. Research and produce a short film and supporting resources for

our education offer. The Engagement Fellow would be trained and

supported to produce a brief, identify film makers, research content

and contributors, and liaise with collections staff about the

inclusion of objects. This film would complement our existing set of

films and education resources:

https://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/museum/resources/

 

2. Suggest and implement an update to one of our permanent displays

that introduces the history of climate change. This might be, for

example, an update to a display about the Northwest Passage that not

only describes the nineteenth century search for the passage, but also

introduces today’s tourism in the region as the ice retreats; it might

involve looking at the science undertaken by Captain Scott’s crew and

relating that to how theories of weather and climate developed; or it

could be researching the work that the Scott Polar Research Institute

undertook in the 1950s to map ice sheets and proposing a way to

incorporate that into the display.

 

Full details of how to apply can be found here:

http://www.bshs.org.uk/bshs-engagement-fellow-the-polar-museum-climate-histories

Tensions of Europe – Research Group on Technology, Environment and Resources

“Challenging Europe:

Technology, environment and the quest for resource security”

Call for Papers for a Special Issue and a Writing Workshop,
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm

13-15 June 2018

Deadline 15 January 2018

The Research Group on Technology, Environment and Resources of the Tensions of Europe Network invites applications for contribution to a special issue and a writing workshop dedicated to the improvement and finalization of well-developed draft contributions to this special issue. The special issue will tie major results and work at former events of the research group together, but it also opens up for new contributors who are not yet members of the research group and who are engaged in relevant research. Invited are authors who are able to deliver serious, fairly mature drafts of full-length papers. The draft papers should be submitted by 15 May 2018. The set of articles will be reviewed, discussed and further developed at the workshop.

The topic of the writing workshop and the special issue and writing workshop covers ongoing research interests along the lines of the preceding workshops and panel series (“Technology, natural resources and crises in the past and present of Europe and beyond”). Themes of particular interests include 1) Globalized resource cycles and environmental transformation; 2) Managing crises: technologies and politics of natural resources; and 3) Perceptions and construction of resources, resource crises and resource futures.

Our understanding of “resources” is broad, comprising water, metals, minerals and energy along with living resources such as fisheries, forests and agricultural land. Our aim is to be able to bridge a wide array of very different resources.

Major questions to be asked comprise:

• How were science and technology used by European states, scientists, local communities and other actors as tools to explore, extract, transform and use natural resources?
• How did actual or perceived resource crises spur the development and application of technologies and the exploration of new resources and new territories?
• Which geopolitical, environmental and societal implications did resource use and needs have in and beyond Europe?
• How did perceptions and visions of resources and the relations of society, technology and resources change over time in European societies and institutions?
• How did technologies contribute to perceptions and conceptions of “development” and “sustainability” and the emergence of forestry and water politics, agricultural development, biofuels and green technologies?

Authors who wish to contribute to the special issue and participate at the writing workshop are asked to submit a 2-page abstract (about 1000 words) and a CV to Per Högselius at perho@kth.se. Authors who wish to contribute to the special issue but are unable to participate at the writing workshop are also invited to submit an abstract and CV. The deadline is 15 January 2017. We will attempt to organize funding for those in need of travel support for the writing workshop. Please indicate in your application whether you will need travel support.

For further information about the Research Group on Technology, Environment and Resources please see: http://toe2.du-de.nl/technology-environment-and-resources/.