Environmental history

Environmental history is an expanding field in historical research. Attention to the subject is driven by a growing awareness of the severe environmental challenges we face in our time. Research within the field focuses on the changing relationship between humans and nature. Traditionally, historians have approached the past without sufficiently taking nature and environmental issues into account. An important starting point for the course is that large parts of the familiar historical narrative look very different when studied in an environmental context. During the course, you examine how human activities throughout history have depended on and interacted with the natural world. Covering long historical perspectives, we analyze natural disasters, epidemics and famine against the backdrop of human exploitation of natural resources and technological advances. On a general level, you study how the relationship to natural phenomena and resources has shaped people’s lives and conditions in different parts of the world.

During the course, you problematize theories about the environment and sustainability in relation to people and society. We critically discuss different kinds of source materials and how these can be used in historical studies. Sources in environmental history can include everything from nature’s own archives (e.g. fish stocks, mosses, forests) to government reports and intellectual history discourses. Moreover, we examine the need to develop new interdisciplinary methods in order analyze the available sources.