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@gmail.com
 
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.ox.ac.uk
 
This event is free to attend. Please email john.lidwell-durnin@history.ox.ac.uk to reserve a place.
 

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.narrative-science.org/events-narrative-science-project-workshops-environment.html