Cristina Brito

Humans and Aquatic Animals in Early Modern America and Africa

This book deals with peoples’ practices, perceptions, emotions and feelings towards aquatic animals, their ecosystems and nature on the early modern Atlantic coasts by addressing exploitation, use, fear, empathy, otherness, and indifference in the relationships established with aquatic environments and resources by Indigenous Peoples and Europeans. It focuses on large aquatic fauna, especially manatees (but also sharks, sea turtles, seals, and others) as they were hunted, consumed, venerated, conceptualised, and recorded by different societies across the early colonial Americas and West Africa. Through a cross-cultural approach drawing on concepts and analytical methods from marine environmental history, the blue humanities and animal studies, this book addresses more-than-human systems where ecologies, geographies, cosmogonies, and cultures are an entangled web of interdependencies.

https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789048544851/humans-and-aquatic-animals-in-early-modern-america-and-africa

4TH WORLD CONGRESS OF ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY

19-23 AUGUST, 2024 | OULU, FINLAND

The Call for Papers is now open and closes at 23:59 CET on 18 September 2023.

More information at https://wceh2024.com/cfp

THEME: TRANSITIONS, TRANSFORMATIONS AND TRANSDISCIPLINARITY: HISTORIES BEYOND HISTORY

With this overarching conference theme, WCEH2024 aims to emphasize both the arc of time and the importance of bringing diverse approaches to bear on contemporary problems. The conference will illuminate the value of historical understandings that go far beyond the discipline of history. Environmental history is to be seen as an evolving practice, one that is created in conversation across multiple fields, concerns, and communities.

The theme speaks to instances of transitions (between eras and regimes of human impact, between unsustainable and sustainable practices); of transformations (of ecologies and landscapes, of practices and expectations); and of transdisciplinarity (across methods, theories, traditions, and audiences).

We invite delegates to address different aspects of time, change and transition in studies of the environment, while also considering new avenues for reflecting upon ongoing environmental changes and their future consequences. We also seek to put the spotlight on the complexity and contested nature of tranformations, and to reveal how rich historical perspectives can help elucidate how environmental, social or cultural transformations work (or how they don’t), and how they can be made to better serve the planet and all of us on it. Finally, we seek to broaden the appeal of historically attuned work on the environment (and of work on the environmental past) to other scholars, including anthropologists, archaeologists, biologists, cultural studies scholars, geographers, and philosophers, to name a few. We are interested in stimulating transdisciplinary scholarship and impact that runs not merely across and between disciplines, but beyond and outside academic contexts as well. Firmly grounded in historical understandings of humans, non-humans, and the environment, such an approach encourages thought across various spheres of society towards understanding and addressing planetary ecological challenges.

Fishing Architecture is Hiring a Biologist

The research project Fishing Architecture (FISH-A), European Research Council Consolidator Grant reference ERC-2021-COG 101044244 (2022–2027), funded by the European Commission through the Horizon Europe Framework Programme, based at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP) in Portugal, is launching a call to recruit a biologist to integrate its research team. The call will be open until July 10th 2023 and aims to hire one post-doctoral researcher.

FISH-A is a research project that sets out to trace a socioecological history of North Atlantic architecture in relation to fisheries, elucidating the relationships between marine environments and terrestrial landscapes and assessing the ecological impact of fishing constructions and the natural resources they depend upon. Please check the project website www.fishingarchitecture.com for further information.

More information at:

SPUP - FAUP| Doutorado de Nível Inicial - Projeto "Fishing Architecture" Ref. 2023/14, N.º 25

Par Inês Amorim

Cet article propose de reconstituer l’évolution des paysages du sel dans l’estuaire d’Aveiro (Portugal) en mobilisant la cartographie et les statistiques historiques du XVIIIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours. Si les cartes montrent une quasi-disparition des salines, elles témoignent aussi de l’articulation des échelles entre les espaces salicoles micro-locaux et l’insertion de la lagune d’Aveiro dans un système mondialisé.

Les paysages du sel à Aveiro (Portugal) – du patrimoine cartographique au patrimoine salicole – L'Atlas Bleu (cnrs.fr)

Koldo Trápaga Monchet (Editor), Álvaro Aragón-Ruano (Editor), Cristina Joanaz de Melo (Editor)

This book aims to shed light on the roots of sustainability in the Iberian Peninsula that lie in the interrelations between shipbuilding and forestry from the 14th to the 19th centuries, combining various geographical scales (local, regional and national) and different timespans (short-term and long-term studies). Three main themes are discussed in depth firstly, the roots of current conservationism in the Iberian Peninsula; the evolution of the forest policies set in motion at the local, regional and national levels to meet the demand for wood and timber; and the long-standing impact of naval empirical forestry on the conservation and transformation of the forest landscape. Therefore, the book attempts, on the one hand, to unravel the forest policies and empirical forestry implemented in the Iberian Peninsula as the roots or origins of what we refer to nowadays as "sustainability", to assess the contribution of imperial forestry to landscape planning and the conservation of forest resources, on the other, and, finally, to break away from the prevailing theological narrative that shipbuilding was the main agent of forest destruction in the Early Modern Iberian Peninsula, for which both quantitative and qualitative analyses will be conducted. This book could be of maximum interest to environmental and social historians and researchers, and anyone devoted to conducting research on the emergence and evolution of the concept of "sustainability" with respect to the governance and the historical transformation of woodlands around the world.

288 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication June 5, 2023

Roots of Sustainability in the Iberian Empires by Koldo Trápaga Monchet | Goodreads

Deadline for submissions: 30 June 2023

The European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) invites expressions of interest to host the biennial conference of the Society in 2025. Host institution(s) will be responsible for the organisation and running of the conference. It/They will work closely with the Programme Committee and the ESEH board to design the conference. 

Past organisers have found hosting the conference a rewarding experience that raises the profile of their institutions. Conference organisation offers an opportunity to develop new relationships and professional skills, and to bring a thriving community of international scholars to your region. Organising a conference in a (post-)pandemic world is a challenge but the ESEH team is available to support you. We encourage ideas to make the conference as inclusive, accessible and welcoming as possible, to continue the series of memorable ESEH events that have built our community and offered an outlet for our scholarship.

To apply to host the conference in 2025, please supply a Letter of Intent, an estimated budget, and any accompanying materials to the Site Selection Committee by the deadline.

The letter of intent and all accompanying materials (including budget estimates and support letters) must be sent by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The results of the process will be communicated by 15 July 2023.

Do not hesitate to contact the Site Selection Committee with queries via email to email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Please also contact us if you would like to host the conference, but your resources are limited or if you would like to co-host the conference with other institutions in your region.

More informtion at Call for expressions of interest to host the ESEH Biennial Conference 2025 – European Society for Environmental History