Posted July 26th, 2010
The Centre for Environmental History at ANU has launched its website:
http://ceh.environmentalhistory-au-nz.org/
The website introduces some of the people, partnerships, research, teaching, publications and events currently associated with the Centre.
Posted July 1st, 2010
Pictures of Time Beneath: Science, Heritage and the Uses of the Deep Past
by Kirsty Douglas
Pictures of Time Beneath examines three celebrated heritage landscapes: Adelaide’s Hallett Cove, Lake Callabonna in the far north of South Australia, and the World Heritage listed Willandra Lakes Region of New South Wales. It offers philosophical insights into significant issues of heritage management, our relationship with Australian landscapes, and an original perspective on our understanding of place, time, nation and science.
Launched at National Museum of Australia 22 June 2010 by Tom Griffiths.
Tom Griffiths’ Speech (PDF)
Kirsty Douglas is a heritage specialist with a background in geology and history. She has been an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Australian National University and completed her PhD in history at the same institution in 2004.
More details:
http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/20/pid/6342.htm
Posted July 1st, 2010
Monash University, Gippsland Campus and the Centre for Gippsland Studies present
Gippsland Environments and Human Interaction: Past, Present and Future
Date: Friday 22 and Saturday 23 October 2010
Venue: Monash University, Gippsland Campus, Churchill, Victoria
This academic and community conference examines the ways in which the people of Gippsland respond to and interact with the Gippsland environment. The conference addresses themes such as Aboriginal Gippsland, exploration and settlement, pioneer pastoralism and farming, Gippsland landscapes through history, fishing, water management and coastal management, industrialization and mining, forestry and the use of natural resources, heritage management, fire management, Gippsland flora and fauna, current agriculture and pastoralism, politicization of the environment, re-creation and perceptions of ‘wilderness’, and portraying the environment.
Papers, presentations, artwork, posters, panel discussions and cultural performances are sought from community members and academics across a range of disciplines. Please forward proposals or abstracts to cgs.conference@monash.edu from early July.
Submission deadline: 4 August 2010.
Further information and registration details available from early July.
Posted June 18th, 2010
Seminar by Brett Bennett
Tuesday 29th June, 5-6pm
Lecture Theatre, Forestry Building (48) Linnaeus Way (comes off Daley Road)
Charles Lane Poole (1885-1970) and Edward Harold Swain (1883-1970) are perhaps the two most influential foresters in Australia’s history. Born in Britain and trained in France, Lane Poole served as the conservator of forests in Western Australia from 1916-1921 and as the principal of the Australian Forestry School and the inspector general of forests for the Commonwealth government from 1927-1945. A patriotic and idiosyncratic Australian, Swain served as the chairman of the forestry board in Queensland from 1924-1931 and as the forestry commissioner of New South Wales from 1935-1948. Both men had strong and often conflicting views about forestry education, silviculture, management, and economics.
Swain sought to make an Australian forestry suited to its unique climate, culture, and socio-economic conditions. Lane Poole tried to remake a continental European and British imperial forestry tradition in Australia that emphasized a strict professional training and a conservation program based upon the management of existing forests. In many ways, Lane Poole’s professionalism won out over Swain’s bold vision, but over time Swain’s assessments about Australian forestry proved to be a more accurate predictor of the direction that forestry and Australian society would take in the 1950s until the present day. But in spite of his professional success, Lane Poole failed to achieve his single goal to centralize research and forestry policy within the federal government. His failure and vision still reverberates with Australian forestry to this day.
I argue that we can use the historic examples of Lane Poole and Swain to better situate the present and future of Australian forestry. Many of the problems they identified still remain today, and their ideas can provide us new ways of thinking about old problems.
Brett Bennett is currently a PhD candidate in history at the University of Texas at Austin and a visiting resident in the Centre for Environmental History at the Australian National University. In 2011 he will take up a position as lecturer in modern history at the University of Western Sydney. He has published widely on forestry history in Australia, India, South Africa, and Southeast Asia. His masters thesis and article in the May 2009 issue of Environment and History explored the founding of the Australian Forestry School. Most recently he wrote an editorial in the 28 April Canberra Times calling for the protection of the former school buildings.
Posted May 31st, 2010
Centre for Environmental History, Australian National University, Canberra
25-29 October, 2010
Applications for the 2010 workshop have closed. The next workshop will be held in 2012
For five days in October this year, the Centre for Environmental History at the Australian National University will be running a workshop for PhD students from around the country who are researching aspects of environmental history in Australia, New Zealand or elsewhere. This is the fifth biennial workshop in environmental history run at ANU since 2002.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together doctoral students with common interests to learn from one another about how to address significant, exciting themes in this emerging field of scholarship. Students will be expected to participate by speaking and writing about their own research, and by doing some preparatory reading that will be provided in advance.
Morning sessions will be held each of the five days (Monday 25 October to Friday 29 October). These will feature seminars on major themes in environmental history as well as student presentations on their doctoral research. Afternoons will mostly be reserved for preparatory reading, fieldwork, optional museum and archival visits, and informal meetings.
Course organisers will be Professor Tom Griffiths (Centre for Environmental History, ANU), Dr Libby Robin (Fenner School of Environment and Society ANU/Centre for Historical Research, National Museum of Australia), Dr Nicholas Brown (School of History, Research School of Social Sciences ANU/Centre for Historical Research National Museum of Australia), Dr Gregory Barton (Centre for Environmental History, ANU), Dr Christine Hansen (Centre for Environmental History, ANU), Dr Mike Smith (Centre for Historical Research, NMA) and Professor Heather Goodall (Centre for Transforming Cultures, University of Technology, Sydney).
Our international guest of honour will be Professor John McNeill (Georgetown University, Washington DC).
The workshop is designed for doctoral students currently enrolled at universities in Australia and New Zealand who are undertaking studies in environmental history (in all its forms). The number of participants will be strictly limited (to facilitate discussion). There is no registration fee.
Please apply by providing the following:
Send your application to Dr Libby Robin, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Building 43, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, or via email Libby.Robin@anu.edu.au by Monday, 19 July 2010.
Financial support will be available to participants from outside Canberra. For those coming from interstate capital cities, this will include a reimbursement for a return discount economy airfare (or petrol expenses) plus a contribution of $150 to your accommodation expenses. An equivalent level of support will be offered to international participants.
We look forward to hearing from you!
This PhD Workshop is sponsored by the Centre for Environmental History in the Research School of Social Sciences, the Fenner School of Environment and Society, ANU and the Centre for Historical Research, National Museum of Australia.
Posted May 20th, 2010
Recordings of two lectures from recent events hosted by the Centre for Environmental History:
Paul Warde’s public lecture ‘Figuring the Future: Forests and the Welfare of Posterity 1500-1850’ delivered at An Evening of Environmental History, Australian National University, 6 May 2010.
Download Paul Warde’s lecture (46 mins, MP3 44MB).
Sverker Sörlin’s lecture ‘Futures, Climate and Science from Charles Richet to the Anthropocene’ delivered at Expertise for the Future III: Canberra Workshop, National Museum of Australia, 7 May 2010.
Download Sverker Sörlin’s lecture (50 mins, MP3 47MB).
Paul Warde is a Reader in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia. His books include Economy, Ecology and State Formation in Early Modern Germany (2006) and (co-edited with Sverker Sörlin) Nature’s End: History and the Environment (Palgrave, 2009). Paul runs the project History and Sustainability at the Centre for History and Economics, King’s College, Cambridge.
Sverker Sörlin is professor of Environmental History in the Division of History of Science and Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and he serves on the Advisory Board of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, where he is also senior researcher.
