Recent Project Events
Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago)
Beyond Capital: The Climate Crisis as a Challenge to Social Thought
Friday, February 7 2014
Harvard University
Co-sponsors: Harvard Centre for the Environment and the Mahindra Humanities Center
Asia and the New History of Energy
February 21-22, 2013
Harvard University
This meeting was 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 labor. The workshop placed energy at the center 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.
Timothy Mitchell (Columbia University)
Economentality: How the Future Entered Government
Friday, November 9th, 2012, 5-7pm CGIS-S020
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
November 17 - 18 2011
Center for History and Economics
CGIS, 61 Kirkland Street, Room 24
The workshop 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)
September 22 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
April 22 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. The workshop website can be found here.
Event poster 1» 
Event poster 2»
Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
February 15 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
February 8 2011
Jeremy Zallen
Staging Lights: Dreams, Machines, and the Spatial History of Electric Illumination
Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
November 2 2010
Joshua Specht
The Consolidation of a National Beef Industry, 1880-1910
Joan Martinez-Alier (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona)
November 8 2010
Social Metabolism and Ecological Distribution Conflicts
(This talk was co-sponsored by The Project on Justice, Welfare, and Economics (JWE) and the Political Economy of Modern Capitalism Workshop.)
Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
May 11 2010
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
April 13 2010
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
November 16-17 2009
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 Seminar
September 30 2009
The Dawn of Green
Harriet Ritvo (MIT)
Lower Library, Robinson Hall at 4.15pm
Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
April 7 2009
Jennifer Thomson
'We Are the Burning Rage of this Dying Planet': The Earth Liberation Front and American Environmentalism
Center for History and Economics Graduate Workshop
November 20 2008
Philipp Lehmann
"Germans in the Sandbox”: The Colonial Encounter with the Southwest African Desert
Center for History and Economics Seminar
November 5 2008.
Limits and growth: environment and energy supply in Britain, 1560-2000
Paul Warde (University of East Anglia)
History and Sustainability Workshop
October 31 2008. Organized with the support of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
Informal meeting of interested faculty and students
October 16 2008 at 4.15pm - 6.00pm, CGIS South S-422