CfP: Workshop, July 20th, 2019, Environment, Climate, and Heredity, History Faculty, Oxford University
Workshop themes
The
relative stability of agriculture and production of food enjoyed in the
last century is entangled with the history of
heredity. Experimentation in plant breeding produced both the crops
that we rely upon and our knowledge of the laws of heredity and
inheritance, while debates over human reproduction and population levels
have always been entangled with anxieties over our
agricultural production. What makes the history of heredity
particularly important within the history of science is the large role
played by the public: farmers, gardeners, and plant breeders have been
the principal actors in advancing cultures of experimentation
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while physicians, educators
and social reform workers have all contributed to public and wider
understandings of human heredity, and the inheritance of traits and
characteristics.
Environmental
history and the environmental humanities have flourished in the last
decade, producing new perspectives on
these themes. As the environmental sciences and the conservation
movement find themselves facing perennial public scepticism and
challenge, there is a real opportunity for historians of heredity and
researchers working within the environmental humanities to
produce research that helps us to understand the longer history of the
role played by the public not only in debating and contesting scientific
authority on the environment, climate, and the use of natural
resources, but also the special role long held by
the public in contributing to scientific understanding of reproduction
and adaptation.
Invited speakers include:
John Waller
(MSU), Angelique Richardson (Exeter) Samuel Randalls (UCL), Marianne
Sommer (Lucerne), Staffan Müller-Wille (Exeter), Karen Sayer (Leeds
Trinity), and Matthew Holmes (Cambridge).
The workshop will include 1 – 2 sessions dedicated to early career researchers and graduate students,
providing an opportunity to share current research.
We invite submissions for short presentations (15 minutes) from
early career researchers and graduate students on topics related to the
main themes of the workshop. Topics from any historical period or
geographical focus are welcome.
Please send an abstract of roughly 300 words by May 28th to
oxfordclimateheredity2019@
This workshop is funded in part by the John Fell Fund and is
hosted by the History Faculty and the Centre for the History of Science,
Medicine, and Technology, at the University of Oxford. For additional
information, please contact
john.lidwell-durnin@history.
This event is free to attend. Please email john.lidwell-durnin@
In addition, as part of our networking, this event is organised in
collaboration with "Narrative Science in Techno-Environments:
Integrating History of Science with Environmental History and
Humanities," being held July 18-19 in London, organised
by Dr Dominic Berry (LSE). Further details: https://www.