In this issue, Paul Star challenges historians to think about the role of private settlers in environmental change, putting forward the concept of ‘biota barons’ to describe those settlers whose actions resulted in significant ecological changes in nineteenth-century New Zealand. Joanna Bishop outlines a fascinating new topic – the role of medicinal plants in New Zealand – and asks readers for their help in tracking down new sources. Charles Dawson – presently in South America with his family – overviews an important new book on Māori attitudes to the natural world, that is also, as he puts it, ‘a handbook for aspiring kaitiaki’. Finally, Julian Kuzma reviews a delightful new book by Alex Calder which re-examines the relationship between Pākehā literature and the environment.

View it online or download a PDF.

This is the last edition of Environment and Nature in New Zealand under the editorship of James Beattie.

Centre for Environmental History, Australian National University, Canberra

28 May-1 June, 2012

Are you writing a PhD in some aspect of environmental history?

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 sixth 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.

Sessions will be held on each of the five days (Monday 28 May to Friday 1 June). 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), Professor 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), and Professor Heather Goodall (Cosmopolitan Civil Societies, University of Technology, Sydney).

Our international guest of honour will be Professor Sverker Sörlin (Professor of Environmental History at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden).

How to apply

The workshop is designed primarily 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 (together 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 for your attendance from your supervisor (a signature or e-mail will do!)

Send your application to Professor Libby Robin, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, or via email Libby.Robin@anu.edu.au by Monday, 27 February 2012.

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, Research School of Social Sciences, ANU, the Fenner School of Environment and Society, ANU, and the Centre for Historical Research, National Museum of Australia.

If you can help them with information or comments contact John.Dargavel@anu.edu.au.

Submit your abstract today!

Deadline: December 31, 2012

We look forward to meeting you in Prague.

Conference Secretariat

GUARANT International spol. s r.o.
Opletalova 22
110 00  Prague 1
Czechia (Czech Republic)

We encourage submission of proposals for individual papers and entire panels. Thematically open, we welcome contributions from all STS-related fields, from history, sociology, and philosophy of science, technology, and environment, to provide the broadest spectrum of STS-related research in and beyond Sweden. Moreover, we seek suggestions for alternative formats. These could be, among others, roundtables debating the hotspots issues in the field and/or of public interest or author-meets-critic sessions on recent publication.

To be as inclusive as possible we plan to have a bilingual meeting and ask for presentations held in Swedish or in English; suggestions for whole sessions should be monolingual either in Swedish or in English.

Please send your proposal (no more than 400 words and containing your institutional affiliation) to stsstockholm@gmail.com by February 15, 2012. Inquiries are also welcome at this address.

The organizing committee:
Nina Wormbs, Sabine Höhler, Adam Netzén

In commemoration of fifty years of Silent Spring, the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society is soliciting essays from junior and senior scholars which analyze the impact and reception of Silent Spring as well as the legacy of Rachel Carson.

• How has Silent Spring shaped environmentalism or environmental thought in various countries? How is it a global phenomenon?
• What elements of Silent Spring have had the greatest impact on environmental leaders? Policy makers? Anti-environmentalists?
• How is Silent Spring still relevant to current environmental debates?
• How has the relevance of Rachel Carson’s writing changed over the decades since Silent Spring was published?
• If Rachel Carson were alive today, what would she be writing about?

In the spirit of Carson’s own writing, submissions are encouraged to address an interested public with an approachable and provocative style.

The RCC will be awarding both a junior and senior prize for the most outstanding essays:

• Junior Prize: $1,000 for 1,000 words (or less); Open to students aged 13-18
• Senior Prize: $2,000 for 2,000 words (or less); Open to anyone aged 19 and above

Submissions are due via email (perspectives (at) carsoncenter.lmu.de) by 15 March 2012. Please also include a short biographical profile and indicate whether the essay is to be considered for the junior or senior prize. The essays will be reviewed by an international committee of scholars and writers.

More at the Rachel Carson Center website

This change is largely a response to historical events since the founding of the AFHS. In the 1980s, when AFHS was established, forests were the major environmental issue. Forest Wars were headline news, and no-one was talking about global warming. The AFHS was a pioneering Society then, both in Australia and New Zealand, and it was crucial to establishing both forest history and environmental history in both countries. Today, forests retain great importance in environmental discussions, but popular and scholarly discussions of nature are increasingly focused on climate, non-forest land-use, and the relationship between the economy and nature. Considering the AFHS’s role in fostering some of the pioneering environmental histories, it is a natural extension of the society to recognize the contribution of environmental historians to forest history by adding the title ‘Environment’. We are also recognizing the substantial contribution of New Zealanders and the geographic presence of New Zealand by adding ‘New Zealand’ to the Society’s name.

This will give members of the Environmental History Network a full-service society with conferences, published proceedings, newsletters and publication outlets on the subject of environmental history.  Comments and expressions of interest are welcome. Contact Gregory Barton at gabarton@britishscholar.com

To join the society, please visit our webpage at http://www.foresthistory.org.au/ and click on the “joining us” tab.

- Gregory Barton, President, The Australian Forest History Society

Issue #51 of Australian Humanities Review is available. Guest edited by Lisa Milner is a special section, ‘On the Table: Food in Our Culture’, which includes essays by Colin Bannerman, Barbara Santich, Adrian Peace, Elspeth Probyn, Ferne Edwards, Jemal Nath and Desiree Prideaux. Our Ecological Humanities section continues the special ‘food’ theme with three book excerpts and a review focused on consumption and the human/animal divide.

PhD Scholarship

PhD scholarship in the environmental or maritime history of South-East Asia

The Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University.

http://wwwarc.murdoch.edu.au/img/Warren%20Scholarship.pdf

Calls for papers

“Dimensions of the Indian Ocean World Past: Sources and Opportunities for Interdisciplinary Work in Indian Ocean World History, 9th-19th Century”

To be held at the Western Australian Maritime Museum on 12-14 November 2012.

http://wwwarc.murdoch.edu.au/research/iow_conf.html

“Oceans Past IV: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the History and Future of Marine Animal Populations”

University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, on 7-9 November 2012.

The Oceans Past conference series is an initiative of History of Marine Animal Populations (HMA)P, the historical component of the Census of Marine Life (CoML). This conference, the first in the Oceans Past series to be held in the Southern Hemisphere, will showcase the latest global research in marine environmental history and historical marine ecology in a location accessible to researchers and policy-makers from across the Indo-Pacific region.

http://www.hmapcoml.org/oceanspast/

The Centre for Gippsland Studies, Monash University

Friday 25 and Saturday 26 November 2011

The Auditorium (Building 3E)
Monash University, Gippsland Campus
Northways Road, Churchill Victoria 3842

This academic and community event examines the ways in which the people of Gippsland respond to and interact with the Gippsland environment. The conference will consider how the region has shaped the Gippsland people and how they in turn have shaped their surroundings. Conference themes include:

• Aborigines and early Gippsland
• the use of natural resources
• management of the environment
• the landscape, flora and fauna of Gippsland
• conservation and representations of the environment

Conference papers, presentations, artwork, posters, panel discussions and cultural performances are sought from community members and academics across a range of disciplines.

Contact: Centre for Gippsland Studies (Dr Julie Fenley)

Email: Julie.Fenley@monash.edu

Conference web site