Climate Change roundtable discussion
19 January 2018, Center for History and Economics, Harvard University
Participants: Sunil Amrith, Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of History, Harvard University; Aditya Balasubramanian, Research Fellow, Center for the History of Political Economy, Duke University; Deborah Coen, Professor of History, Yale University ;Max Ehrenfreund, Graduate Research Associate, Center for History and Economics, Harvard University; Anna Henchman, Associate Professor of English, Boston University; Diana Kim, Assistant Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown; Jon Levy, Professor of History, University of Chicago; Anthony Medrano, Ziff Environmental Fellow, Harvard Center for the Environment; Nikhil Naik, EHP Fellow, Center for History and Economics, Harvard University; Carol Richards, Santa Monica, CA; Harriet Ritvo, Arthur J. Conner Professor of History, MIT; Emma Rothschild, Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History, Harvard University; Benjamin Sacks, Graduate Student, History department, Princeton University; Victor Seow, Assistant Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University.

 

The Light and the Heat: Productivity Co-Benefits of Energy-Saving Technology
6 December 2017
History and Economics Seminar, Harvard University
Namrata Kala (MIT)

 

Climate Change roundtable discussion
30 November 2017, Center for History and Economics, Harvard University
Participants: Sunil Amrith, Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of History, Harvard University; Shane Bobrycki, EHP Fellow, Center for History and Economics, Harvard University; Abhijit Banerjee, Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics, MIT; Max Ehrenfreund, Graduate Research Associate, Center for History and Economics; Namrata Kala, Assistant Professor, Applied Economics, MIT; Diana Kim, Assistant Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown; Philipp Lehmann, Assistant Professor of History, University of California, Riverside; Jon Levy, Professor of History, University of Chicago; Anthony Medrano, Ziff Environmental Fellow, Harvard Center for the Environment; Jules Ziqi Qiu, Harvard ’19; David K. Richards, Scholar ‘17, Magdalene College, Cambridge; Surabhi Ranganathan, University Lecturer in International Law, Kings College, Cambridge; Carol Richards, Santa Monica, CA; Emma Rothschild, Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History, Harvard University; Victor Seow, Assistant Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University; Melissa Teixeira, EHP Fellow, Center for History and Economics, Harvard University.

 

Domesticating Energy. Energy environments inside and outside the home
25-26 May 2017, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge

 

Nature's Present: Environmental crossroads in 21st century India
1 March 2017
History and Economics Seminar, Harvard University
Mahesh Rangarajan (Ashoka University)

 

Environment, Society, and the Making of the Modern World: The history and legacy of the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm, June 1972
14 - 16 December 2016, Stockholm, Sweden

Dipesh Chakrabarty (The University of Chicago)  
10 November 2016, Harvard University
The Human Condition in the Anthropocene
(Co-sponsors - Harvard University Center for the Environment and the Mahindra Humanities Center)

 

Glenda Sluga (University of Sydney)
27 October 27 2016, Harvard University
Climate and Capital: Barbara Ward, Margaret Mead, and the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment

The History of Prediction and Energy Systems of the Future
4 October 2016
Speaker: Dr Paul Warde, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Respondents: Martin Crouch, Ofgem
In this seminar historian Dr Paul Warde examines why long-term predictions of energy use have been repeatedly made in error, and yet their use persists. He discusses the political, technical and personal factors shape our desire to know about the future, and our adherence to methods that are so often confounded by the course of events.

 

 

Center for History and Economics Seminar
2 May 2016, Harvard University
Nicholas Stern (London School of Economics)
The logic, urgency and promise of tackling climate change: the road to and from Paris
(Co-sponsor – Harvard University Center for the Environment)

 

The History of Energy and the Environment
22-23 October 2015, Harvard University
The History Project, in cooperation with the Joint Center for History and Economics and the Global History of Energy Project, supported by the Harvard University Center for the Environment, held its fourth conference on October 22-23, 2015 at Harvard University. A presentation of research by conference participants and Harvard University scholars will ran concurrently in the CGIS South Concourse. The projects were on display all day Thursday, October 22 and Friday, October 23. The research exhibition was open to the public.

 

Centre for History and Economics Seminar
28 April 2015, University of Cambridge
Julia Adeney Thomas (University of Notre Dame/Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study)
The Historian's Task in the Anthropocene: Finding a Useful Past in Japan

 

Centre for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
11 March 2015, University of Cambridge
Marta Musso, Oil will set us free? The politics of hydrocarbons in Algerian decolonisation

 

Energy in History
27 February 2015, Magdalene College, Cambridge
Energy exploitation and use have far reaching effects from global, to national, to personal. Work in the emerging field of energy history is increasingly seeking to study the full range of activities associated with different energy sources and uses, comparatively and over time. This one-day workshop brought together work on a range of historical periods and energy types with a view to developing methodologies, creating working networks, and generating further understanding of current research within the field of historical energy use. Organising committee: Kayt Button, Tae-Hoon Kim, Marta Musso, Paul Warde.

 

Centre for History and Economics Seminar
27 January 2015, University of Cambridge       
Sunil Amrith (Harvard University)
The South Asian Monsoon: A History for the Anthropocene

New Directions in Energy History
14 November 2014, Harvard University
The panel presentations and roundtable were chaired by Ian J. Miller (Harvard University). Presenting were John R. McNeill (Georgetown University) on ‘Ecological Teleconnections of the Industrial Revolution’ and Christopher F. Jones (Arizona State University) on ‘The Forgotten King: Coal, Energy, and History’. Paul Warde (University of East Anglia) gave comments and response.

Means of Transport: Technology, Mobility, and Energy in Modern Asia
24-25 April 2014, Harvard University
This workshop organised by Victor Seow on behalf of the Joint Center for History and Economics was part of the programme on the global history of energy, supported by the Harvard University Center for the Environment and brought together scholars working on the history of transportation in modern Asia.

 

Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago)
7 February 2014, Harvard University
Beyond Capital: The Climate Crisis as a Challenge to Social Thought
Co-sponsors: Harvard University Centre for the Environment and the Mahindra Humanities Center

 

Asia and the New History of Energy
21-22 February 2013, Harvard University
This meeting was organised by Philipp Lehmann, Ian J. Miller, and Victor Seow as part of an ongoing series of events designed to open new horizons in the global and comparative history of energy. The workshop reexamined the history of Asia through what might be called the "new history of energy," an approach that expands research on energy history and energy policy in order to better account for the particular characteristics and uses of energy sources, from fossil fuels and renewable alternatives to human and animal labour. The workshop placed energy at the centre of inquiry in Asian history, asking how energy production and consumption interacted with larger social and environmental processes. We also used the focus on energy to reconsider well-known narratives within national and regional histories.

 

Center for History and Economics Seminar
21 February 2013, Harvard University
John McNeill (Georgetown University)
Global Energy History: The Last 10,000 Years

 

Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
10 October 2013, Harvard University
 Joshua Specht, Beefsteaks and Beef Scandals: Red Meat in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

 

Timothy Mitchell (Columbia University)
9 November 2012, Harvard University
Economentality: How the Future Entered Government
This event was co-sponsored by the Energy History Project at the Harvard Center for History and Economics, with the support of the Harvard University Center for the Environment..

 

Units, Ideas, and Images in the History of Energy
17-18 November 2011, Harvard University
The workshop, organized by Philipp Lehmann, explored changes in the depiction, understanding, and measurement of energy in the early modern and modern periods. How did people think about energy in relation to natural forces and economic processes? What were the competing ideas about the nature of energy and its relation to work? Why do we use the units we do today when quantifying energy and why were alternative ways of measurement discarded? In considering these questions, the workshop also aimed to examine how new ideas about society and political economy influenced the history of energy production and consumption as well as larger social and environmental processes. This workshop is part of an ongoing series of events on the global and comparative history of energy, with the support of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.

 

Richard White (Stanford University)
22 September 2011
Did Things Have to Turn Out This Way? Energy, Technology, Markets and the Environment in the North American West

 

Energy and Environment: A Global History
22 April 2011, Harvard University Center for the Environment
The workshop considered energy history in a global perspective. It presented new research by graduate students from Harvard and MIT, and concluded with a roundtable session of faculty from both institutions. The workshop was the first in a series of events hosted by the Energy History Project. Participants included David Blackbourn, Alison Frank, Richard Hornbeck, Ian Miller, Harriet Ritvo and Emma Rothschild.

 

Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
15 February 2011
Philipp Lehmann, Polish Steppes and German Gardens: Desertification in the Nazi Plans for Environmental Transformation in the East

 

Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
8 February 2011
Jeremy Zallen, Staging Lights: Dreams, Machines, and the Spatial History of Electric Illumination

 

Joan Martinez-Alier (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona)
8 November 8 2010, Harvard University 
Social Metabolism and Ecological Distribution Conflicts
(This talk was co-sponsored by The Project on Justice, Welfare, and Economics and the Political Economy of Modern Capitalism Workshop.)

 

Environmental Histories: Local Places, Global Processes
Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire
5 - 7 November 2010, Magdalene College and Wicken Fen
Wicken Fen served as an instructive example of different types of environmental change, anthropogenic and autogenic, long-term and short-term, as well as instances of continuity. At this site-specific workshop, a core team of mainly academic participants met with representatives of a local, non-university project partner to critically examine what we mean by ‘the environment’ and ‘environmental change’ in both current and past contexts, and on local and international scales. For further information, please see the workshop website.

 

Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
2 November 2010, Harvard University
Joshua Specht, The Consolidation of a National Beef Industry, 1880-1910

 

Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
11 May 11 2010, Harvard University
Jeremy Zallen, Vessels of Airy Death: A Story of Humans, Planes, War, and the Metabolism of Historical Energy

 

Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
13 April 2010, Harvard University
Maya Peterson, Negotiating Empire in the Land of Seven Rivers: Environmental Change and Social Conflict in Russia's Central Asian Borderland, 1905-1917

 

Expertise for the Future: Histories of Predicting Environmental Change
16-17 November 2009, Harvard Center for the Environment, Harvard University
The Center for History and Economics, together with the Harvard University Center for the Environment, organised a two day colloquium on Expertise for the Future: Histories of Predicting Environmental Change. Presenters included Alison Bashford (Harvard University), Maria Bohn (Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm), Libby Robin (Australia National University), Sverker Sörlin (Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm), Edmund Russell (Virginia Tech), and Paul Warde (University of East Anglia).

 

Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
27 October 2009, Harvard University
Josh Specht, A Failure to Prohibit: New York City's Underground 'Bob' Veal Trade

 

Center for History and Economics Seminar
30 September 2009
Harriet Ritvo (MIT)
The Dawn of Green

 

Expertise for the Future: Histories of predicting environmental change
22 – 23 July 2009, University of East Anglia

 

Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
7 April 2009, Harvard University
Jennifer Thomson, ‘We Are the Burning Rage of this Dying Planet': The Earth Liberation Front and American Environmentalism

 

History and Sustainability: Environmental History and Education for Sustainable Development
10 January 2009, University of East Anglia
A workshop, organised by Paul Warde as part of the History and Sustainability project at the Centre, featured presentations and discussions on current developments in environmental history, and how they might relate to sustainability debates and policy, and the role of history in wider education about sustainability at all levels both within and without the formal education system. It aimed to bring together specialists in the field to discuss their results and practice, along with those new to the discipline and working in related fields, and history education more broadly.

 

Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
20 November 2008
Philipp Lehmann, "Germans in the Sandbox”: The Colonial Encounter with the Southwest African Desert

Center for History and Economics Seminar
5 November 2008, Harvard University
Paul Warde (University of East Anglia)
Limits and growth: environment and energy supply in Britain, 1560-2000

History and Sustainability
31 October 2008, Harvard University
The meeting was organised jointly by the Center for History and Economics and the Center for the Environment at Harvard University. A number of the papers presented were published in Modern Intellectual History, April 2011. Forum: The Idea of Sustainability:Introduction (Emma Rothschild), The Invention of Sustainability (Paul Warde), Environmental, Economic, and Moral Dimensions of Sustainability in the Petroleum Industry in Austrian Galicia (Alison Frank), Maintaining (Environmental) Capital Intact (Emma Rothschild).

 

 Centre for History and Economics Seminar
30 January 2008, University of Cambridge
Paul Warde (University of East Anglia), The Invention of Sustainability: Agronomy in Britain and Germany c.1500-1850

 

 History and Sustainability
6 – 7 September 2007, Centre for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Cambridge
The meeting provided a number of perspectives on the contribution historians can make to contemporary debates about sustainability and examined the following themes: International developments in the teaching of environmental history; current directions and debates within environmental history; historical ideas of sustainability; the role of history in educating for sustainable development in higher and pre-university education. Contributors included Rupert Brakspear, Vinita Damodaran, Brigid Hains, Poul Holm, Melissa Lane, Stephen Mosley, Jose Augusto Padua, Libby Robin, Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde.

 

Centre for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
24 May 2007, University of Cambridge
Philipp Lehmann, Colonial communication: The development and failure of information networks in German Southwest Africa

 

Energy, Economic Growth and Pollution. European pasts and futures, c.1800-2006
12 May 2006, Pembroke College, Cambridge
A conference was organised by Paul Warde as part of the energy, economic growth and pollution (EGP) network’s series of meetings and co-ordinated research. The prime goal of the network’s research since 2003 has been to illuminate the role of energy in long-term economic growth, and the environmental consequences of this role. The aim of the meeting was to facilitate discussion of papers produced by the EGP network and to develop a dialogue on a wide number of themes relating energy consumption, economic and environmental change. Participants included Francesca Antolín, Silvana Bartoletto, Kerstin Enflo, Astrid Kander, Lennart Schön and Tony Wrigley.

 

Centre for History and Economics Seminar
8 February 2006, University of Cambridge
Poul Holm (University of Southern Denmark/Churchill College)
The last Fish? A Historical Perspective on the Exploitation of the North Sea

 

Uses of Environmental History: Cross Disciplinary Conversations 
13 – 14 January 2006, Centre for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Cambridge
The conference, organized by Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde, aimed to provide some space to reflect on the achievements, diversity, and direction of environmental history, especially in its varied national, international and continental contexts.

 

Centre for History and Economics Seminar
18 May 2005, University of Cambridge
Sverker Sörlin (Centre for History and Economics/Pembroke College)
The Nature of Success: Narratives of National Performance before the Welfare State - Sweden ca 1890-1940

 

Uses of Environmental History
14 May 2005, Pembroke College, Cambridge
This was the second of two workshops organized by Paul Warde on the theme of uses of environmental history and aimed to bring a wide range of reflection and current scholarly practice together in six papers. The subjects ranged from the historiography of the environment and the implicit values pertaining to various environmental history practices, to the issue of interdisciplinarity and the practice of research by young academics in the field.

 

 Uses of Environmental History
4 February 2005, King's College, Cambridge
The colloquium was organised by Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde with the aim to present ideas and promote discussion, especially of the cross-disciplinary 'uses' to which environmental history has been put, its current strengths and weaknesses. A short background paper by the organisers was presented at the meeting, followed by an open discussion.

 

Documenting Environmental Change Seminar
11 February 2004, Clare Hall, Cambridge
Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, Department of Geography, Cambridge
Nation and Nature: Fascism, Aesthetics and Conservation in Italy

 

Documenting Environmental Change Seminar
3 December 2003, Clare Hall, Cambridge
Helen McDonald, History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge
Rock birds and beach blonds: mid-twentieth-century falcon trapping cultures in East Coast America    

 

Documenting Environmental Change Seminar
26 November 2003, Clare Hall, Cambridge
Paul Warde, Pembroke College, Cambridge
European forests and woodlands, 1500-1800

 

Documenting Environmental Change Seminar
5 November 2003, Clare Hall, Cambridge
A.T. Grove, Geography Department, Cambridge
Climatic history in relation to climatic prediction

 

Energy, Environment and Health
24 – 26 October 2003, King's College, Cambridge
The meeting, organised by Paul Warde, generated a comparative study of energy uses in all sectors of the economy from the period of the 'first industrial revolution' (from ca. the late 18th century onwards) to the present day, with an accompanying analysis of the development of GDP and pollution in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy and Spain. Papers were presented by Tony Wrigley, Lennart Schön and Magnus Lindmark.

 

Commonland in Western Europe
20 – 21 September 2003, Pembroke College, Cambridge
The meeting, organised by Paul Warde and Leigh Shaw-Taylor (Jesus College, Cambridge), involved papers and comparative discussions among scholars from England, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. It focused on the relationships between common land, poor relief and social exclusion; the history of the commons in the very long term (from late medieval times until the 19th century); and the systematic analysis of data pertaining to commons management. Papers were presented by Mark Bailey, Stefan Brakensiek, Heather Falvey, David Hall, Martina De Moor, Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Nadine Vivier and Paul Warde.

 

Documenting Environmental Change Seminar
11 June 2003, Clare Hall, Cambridge
Meena Singh, Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge
Reconstructing the environmental history of Lesotho       

  

Documenting Environmental Change Seminar
12 May 2003, Clare Hall, Cambridge
Sverker Sorlin, University of Umea, and Michael Bravo, University of Cambridge
Narrative and Practice          

 

Documenting Environmental Change Seminar
30 April 2003, Clare Hall, Cambridge
William Beinart, St Antony's College, University of Oxford
Ecological Imperialism and the Prickly Pear

 

Documenting Environmental Change Seminar
12 March 2003, Clare Hall, Cambridge
Clive Oppenheimer, Department of Geography, Cambridge
Reconstructing the nature and impact of volcanic eruptions

 

Documenting Environmental Change Seminar
26 February 2003, Clare Hall, Cambridge
Richard Drayton, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Environmental History as a Just So Story: Alfred Crosby's ‘Ecological Imperialism'

 

Energy, Environment and Health
18 November 2002, King’s College, Cambridge
An informal meeting organised by Paul Warde on issues concerning energy, environment and health. Participants included Francesca Antolín, Silvana Bartoletto, Ben Gales, Astrid Kander, Magnus Lindmark, Paolo Malanima, Mar del Rubio, Lennart Schön, Chris Whatley, Richard Unger and Tony Wrigley.

 

Documenting Environmental Change Seminar
6 November 2002, Clare Hall, Cambridge
Ed Russell, University of Virginia/Clare Hall
Evolutionary history: prospectus for a new field    

 

Documenting Environmental Change Seminar
23 October 2002, Clare Hall, Cambridge
Oliver Rackham, Corpus Christi College
Documenting the ecological history of the Mediterranean

 

 Commonland in Western Europe
31 March – 1 April 2001, King’s College, Cambridge
The meeting, organised by Paul Warde and Leigh Shaw-Taylor (Jesus College, Cambridge), involved comparative discussions and the presentation of papers by scholars from England, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. The work developing from this meeting was presented in Paris in October 2001. The meeting also formed the basis of a book, The Management of Commonland in North-west Europe c.1500-1850 which was edited by Martina de Moor, Leigh Shaw-Taylor, and Paul Warde and published in August 2002 by Brepols.

 

Environmental Security
7 February 2000, Trinity College, Cambridge
A small round-table on the theme of environmental security. Participants included Ike Achebe (Trinity College, Cambridge), Harriet Bulkeley (St Catharine’s College, Cambridge), Susan Owens (Newnham College, Cambridge), Emma Rothschild, Susan Sechler (Rockefeller Foundation) and Paul Warde.

 

Documenting Environmental Change
15 September 1999, Clare Hall, Cambridge
The colloquium, organised by Meena Singh and Paul Warde, brought together scholars from diverse fields in the humanities, social sciences and physical sciences working on environmental change and reconstruction. Following this colloquium, a project on Documenting Environmental Change was established at the Centre with view to encouraging continued work and dialogue between social and natural scientists engaged in environmental history or forms of historical ecology.

 

 Centre for History and Economics Seminar
11 November 1998, University of Cambridge
Paul Warde, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
Land, Labour and Livestock: Ecology and Employment in Early Modern Germany

 

Global Environment and Security
5 – 6 July 1998, King's College, Cambridge
A workshop involving Sir John Boyd, Yusuke Dan, Caroline Humphrey, Lord Lewis, Minoru Oda, Emma Rothschild, Meena Singh and Paul Warde.

 

 Redefining Security in South Africa
31 March – 1 April 1995, Johannesburg, South Africa
Dr Meena Singh, whose own research examined the impact of environmentally displaced people in Southern Africa, organised an event in connection with the Environment and Democracy project initiated in 1993 at the Centre. The project’s concerns were the environmental consequences of apartheid, and the integration of environmental considerations into policies for the transition to democracy and economic redistribution, including land policies.  Sixty-five participants, including military specialists, academics, MPs and representatives of NGOs met to re-examine the scope of security, and to extend it beyond the military and intelligence functions with which it had come to be associated during the Cold War years. There were comments by Kader Asmal (Ministry of Water and Forestry), Cheryl Carolus (African National Congress), James Cornford (Common Security Forum), Aziz Pahad (Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs),  and Meena Singh. A discussion document edited by Meena Singh, including all the papers presented at the conference, together with a summary of group and plenary discussions, was published by the Centre in August 1995.