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
Are you writing a PhD in some aspect of environmental history?
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).
How to apply
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:
- a brief curriculum vitae
- two short statements (totalling no more than 500 words) explaining the subject of your doctoral research and what you hope to gain from such a workshop, and
- documented support from your supervisor (a signature or e-mail will do!)
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.
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 
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.
This is a call for chapter proposals. World Forest History, a new edited book series by the Australian National University E Press, will publish individual volumes of forest history on individual countries and regions of the world. Each book, published in hardcopy and available as a free download, provides a definitive outline of the rise of state and scientific forestry and the evolution of environmental land management practices, with a special focus on colonial forestry and its legacy. The first edited books will focus on the Indian subcontinent and Southern Africa. Subsequent volumes will focus on individual countries and regions in Australia, Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America.