Editors: Dietlind Hüchtker (University of Vienna), Friedrich Cain (University of Vienna) and Pavla Šimkóvá (Collegium Carolinum)

Deadline for Submissions: 15 November 2026

Call for Papers:
Epistemologies of the Hinterland. The Making of Rural Knowledge in the 20th Century and beyond

Today’s rural environments mirror long historical processes. Especially since the industrial revolution, they can be conceived as the outcome of social, administrative-technological, political, and scientific interventions in a taken-for-granted nature. In our publication project we aim to reconsider these interventions as epistemic complexes that defined rurality along several hierarchical divides that also carved out European modernity: civilization/nature; science/belief, the individual/community; urban/rural; system/habit; measurement/experience; rationality/emotion etc.

Focusing on examples from the area of rurality, we want to search for encounters between bodies of knowledge that have historically been perceived as incommensurable and look at the practices, subjects and objects of knowledge
production. We envision analyses of incommensurability narratives to open perspectives on developments since the early 20th century, but also on the most recent global climate debates and their often very local pinpoints as well as on recent political attempts to re-naturalize complex histories as national cultures.

We want to bring together case studies from different contexts of rurality that offer a new perspective on rural knowledge. At the centre of our attention is on the “how” of knowledge production in all its contradictions, perceived incommensurabilities and inherent power relations. We are focusing mainly on the 20th century, with some sojourns into the 21st century, and on Europe situated within its imperial, colonial, and global context, and the neo-national backlash of re-naturalizing complex histories as national cultures. The significance of science is a central, but not the only aspect.

We are seeking to publish the contributions as a special issue of an international peer-reviewed journal such as Knowledge or Science in Context. Topics can include but are not limited to:

• researching rurality from different disciplinary perspectives
• relations between the researchers and the researched
• historicity of wilderness, nature, and rural spaces
• knowledge production and gender
• hygiene and eugenics in colonial contexts
• knowledge production about precarious agricultural regions (mountains, tundra)
• agricultural modernization
• education in rural areas
• environment, growth and the EU
• global aspects of climate debates and their local contexts
• media and knowledge dissemination

To ensure a concise and coherent publication, we will organize two meetings (online and
in person) to work on questions and concepts, drafts and pre-circulated papers. The
author workshop will take place in Vienna in June 2027.

Preliminary timetable:

15 November 2026: abstract submission deadline

December 2026: online meeting over concept of special issue

June 2027: in-person author workshop in Vienna

Please send your abstract of 500 words max. to dietlind.huechtker(at)univie.ac.at. The deadline for abstracts is the 15th November 2026.

Call for Papers: A World of a Thousand Cuts. Forests, Wood, and Industrialisation Across the Globe in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Organisers: ERC project “Industrial Wood: European Industrialisation as Seen from the Forests (1870–1914) (INWOOD)”

6 - 8 July 2027, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

Deadline for Submissions: 30 November 2026

Call for Papers:
A World of a Thousand Cuts. Forests, Wood, and Industrialisation Across the Globe in the 19th and 20th Centuries

The mainstream historiographies of industrialisation habitually emphasise the novel energy sources and materials that powered this transformative era, such as coal, steel, steam and electricity, implicitly assuming that wood, an important pre-industrial resource, was destined for an inevitable decline. Histories of industrialisation also disproportionately focus on Europe and North America. Stemming from the research vectors of the ERC Starting Grant “Industrial Wood: European Industrialisation as Seen from the Forests (1870-1914)”, this conference aims to rethink the relevance of wood in an unevenly industrialising world throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. It follows more recent interpretative paths, which draw attention to the material diversity of industrial metabolism, in order to achieve a more complex understanding of the social, economic and environmental histories of industrialisation. The conference also seeks to geographically decentre the research perspective and discover the links between forests and industrialisation in the global context.

Industrialisation, understood as a systemic social and economic transformation underpinned by technological innovations and leading to changes in production regimes, was an uneven and chronologically mis-aligned process within Europe and globally, stretching from the late 18th century far into the 20th century. Consequently, the relationship between industrialisation and forest exploitation varied depending on the national and international politics, markets, law regulations, access to technology, environmental movements, property and labour regimes, imperial dynamics and colonial power. Attentive to these complexities, the organisers have approached industrialisation as an a-synchronous, multi-focal and globally encompassing social and economic process, activated by a confluence of economic impetus and political agenda.

Even if in the course of industrialisation wood has been marginalised as a combustible, it maintained its significance in industrial economies as a construction material. Moreover, innovations in technology and transportation – both the drivers and the outcomes of industrialisation – made forests increasingly accessible for large-scale extraction, thus bringing industrial logging into the furthest reaches of the woods and fundamentally reshaping them economically, socially and ecologically. Recent historical, anthropological and archeological studies, focusing mostly on North America and Europe, show that extractivism, (im)migration and environmental degradation were a part of this process. They also reveal that industrialisation of timber production did not mean a complete break with rural economies, and that the demand for wood as fuel or production material (for paper or packaging, for example) changes depending on the historical moment. Through this conference, we aim to broaden the conversation geographically to include global histories of industrialisation and to answer these questions: how did industrialisation change the world’s forests? What kinds of new relationships, dependencies and hierarchies did the arrival of industrialisation within the forest context instigate with regards to natural environments and the working lives linked to their transformation? How does our understanding of industrialisation change when we cease to read it as a sequence of substitutions and instead view it as a process of persistence, accumulation and re-articulation, wherein old material and energy flows are not erased by new ones but are intricately woven into them, undergoing profound transformation? Ultimately, what does the industrialisation of forests mean? And how do we adjust our research methodologies to answer these questions?

The conference seeks to explore cases, with a double focus on forests and industrialisation, in various political contexts and across different geographies throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The papers should relate to but do not have to be limited to the following themes:

• industrialisation and wood consumption
• labour, migration, gender and ethnicity
• empires, colonialism and decolonisation
• industrial wood uses, wood-based businesses and geographies of timber flow
• networks, circulation of ideas and technology
• industrial timberscapes (timber production complexes, workers settlements, infrastructure)
• deindustrialisation and its impact on livelihoods
• environmental effects of industrialisation in forests

Scholars in humanities and social sciences, interested in these topics, are welcome to apply. Ultimately, the conference aims to foster an interdisciplinary confluence between environmental history, social history, economic history, environmental anthropology and related sub-disciplines. We invite contributions from doctoral students, post-doctoral researchers and senior scholars.

ORGANISATION, SUBMISSION AND DEADLINES:
To apply for the conference, please submit a single PDF-file consisting of:

• an abstract of the presentation with a title (max. 500 words)
• name, institutional affiliation, and a list of relevant publications

The applications should be sent to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The organisers will cover meals, travel (economy-class flight or train) and accommodation expenses. The conference will be held in person.

Deadline for submissions: 30 November 2026.

The notifications about the participation in the conference will be sent by the end of January 2027.

Successful applicants will be asked to submit the drafts of their papers (6,000 words) by 15 June 2027.

The organisers plan to publish the papers as an edited volume or a special issue of a journal.

Organisers:
Giacomo Bonan, Kateryna Burkush, Vincenzo Colaprice, Csongor Jánosi, Claudio Lorenzini, Silvia Pizzirani

Call for Papers- Environmental History Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries

Call for Panels for the Eighth Biennial Conference of the European Rural History Organisation

Organisers: University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities

7 – 10 September 2027, Koper, Slovenia

EXTENDED DEADLINE for Panel Proposals: 15 October 2026

The 8th biennial conference of the European Rural History Organisation (EURHO) will be held in Koper – Capodistria, Slovenia, from 7 to 10 September 2027, hosted and organized by the University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities.

In a relatively short time, the EURHO Rural History Conference has become the central event in this field of study bringing together scholars and students from Europe and other continents. Through the years, after its inception in Brighton (2010), followed by conferences in Bern (2013), Girona (2015), Leuven (2017), Paris (2019), Uppsala (2021/2022), Cluj (2023) and Coimbra (2025), participants have built and strengthened collaborations, discussions and networks that have enabled the steady and fast development of modern rural history research, in particular by addressing the people who lived in the countryside as active actors in history. In recent years, the EURHO conferences have managed to expand the participation of researchers from all regions of Europe, as well as from other continents. The Rural History 2027 conference aims to continue these trends.

Nestled in Koper on the Northern Adriatic coast, the University of Primorska well represents Slovenia's position in Europe, bridging North and South, East and West. Panels will also take place in the premises of the Faculty of Management and of the Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technologies. All three faculties are located in the historic centre of Koper, a picturesque coastal town in Northern Istria offering a charming blend of Venetian and Slovenian heritage, historic architecture, and scenic seaside views that make it an enticing destination to explore.

The Rural History 2027 conference website provides information on deadlines, calls for panels and papers, registration, and accommodation. We encourage all participants to apply and register as early as possible.

Researchers working on any aspect of the history of the countryside are invited to submit panel proposals. A panel should focus on a specific topic and include participants from at least two countries. Panel proposals will be assessed by the Conference Scientific Committee which will accept or refuse them, or suggest modifications.

• Panels may be organized in a single session or in double sessions.
• A panel session will last two hours and include four papers; a maximum of five papers is possible.
• Double panels may not exceed eight papers in total.
• Panels will be led by a chair. In case the panel includes a discussant, it may not exceed four papers.
• The presentation of new research and of work in progress is particularly relevant. Long-run perspectives and comparative approaches are particularly welcome.
• Proposals from all the regions and countries of Europe are invited.

A panel proposal may be presented by up to three scholars and should include a title, the full name and affiliation of the organiser(s), a short abstract (up to 500 words) introducing the discussed topic, the area and period it addresses, the approach, as well as the names and affiliations of at least two panel contributors.

The extended deadline for panel proposals is October 15th, 2026.

Before you begin, please ensure you have the contact information and affiliations for all your co-proponents ready. You will receive an automated confirmation email with a link to review or modify your submission once it is complete.

Call for Papers: Entangled Histories Seminar Series 2026–2027

Following the success of the current edition, the Entangled Histories Seminar Series invites abstracts for its 2026–2027 cycle: 

"Borders and Sustainability: Human and Natural Resources across Time and Space."

This edition explores sustainability not as an exclusively environmental concern but as a multifaceted concept that intersects with borders across diverse cultural, material, and ecological contexts. 

The series adopts a diachronic and interdisciplinary perspective, spanning from prehistory to the contemporary world.

Sustainability and Borders: A Broad Perspective. We seek to investigate sustainability in its multiple dimensions:

• Material sustainability: recycling of resources (manuscripts, architectural structures, waste, and landscapes).
• Ecological sustainability: relationships between humans, animals, and environments; balance between preservation and exploitation.
• Social, linguistic, and cultural sustainability: transmission of knowledge, endangered languages, healing practices, migration, and community resilience.
• Symbolic sustainability: representations of ecological limits, hybrid beings, and cultural imaginaries of nature and borders.

Conceptual Framework At the heart of the series lies the concept of borders, understood as dynamic thresholds that shape access to resources and regulate interactions. Borders are not only physical or political: they can be ecological, cultural, social, linguistic, political and material. While we encourage long-term temporalities and global spatial entanglements, we also offer the elements (earth, water, air, fire, ether, wood, etc.) as a possible heuristic framework to explore these dimensions across different historical strata.

Topics of Interest: We encourage contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to:

• Archaeology and Prehistory: Resource use, landscapes, indigenous practices, and environmental interactions over time.
• Medieval Studies, Philology, and Manuscript Cultures: Material sustainability of manuscripts, palimpsests, intellectual ecologies, literatures and languages, and the transmission of knowledge.
• Art History and Visual Culture: Representations of nature, landscapes, borders, and material practices across different periods.
• Anthropology and Folklore: Vernacular ecological knowledge, oral traditions, liminal beings, and environmental imaginaries.
• History of Science and Medicine: Healing practices, scientific knowledge, and environmental understanding across cultures.
• Environmental Humanities and Ecology: Human–non-human relations, ecosystems, climate, and resilience.
• History of Economy, Trade, and Food Systems: Circulation of resources, subsistence, scarcity, and sustainability practices.
• Architecture and Infrastructure Studies: Built environments, water and soil management, roads, and material borders.
• Geography, Cartography, and Media Studies: Spatial representation, mapping, and communication of environmental knowledge across borders.

? High-Impact Publication Opportunity: A selection of the most significant contributions will be published in a dedicated edited volume or a special issue with a leading international publisher (past collaborations and ongoing projects include prestigious venues such as Brill, De Gruyter, and Routledge). This ensures that the research presented reaches a global audience of specialists.

Submission Guidelines

• Format: Online seminar (approximately 30-minute talk + discussion).
• Schedule: October 2026 – Summer 2027.
• Required: Title, Abstract (250–300 words), Short Bio (100–150 words), Affiliation, email address, and preferred months of availability.
• Deadline: 31 August 2026.
• Send to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..