Environmental Histories for Recovery, Restoration, Renewal and Resistance

Australian New Zealand Environmental History Network Conference 2020

2020 has been a turbulent year, with drought and bushfires in Australia, a pandemic, and climate change and Black Lives Matter movements mobilising around the world. Amid this turbulence, environmental issues abound in our own backyard and around the globe, and many debates over their significance and resolution refer to the past: as a baseline, a cautionary tale, an exemplar, and more. There has never been a greater need for environmental history to engage in the public discourse.

The ANZ Environmental History Network (AANZEHN) is hosting its first online conference to address themes of Recovery, Restoration, Renewal and Resistance as a counter-narrative to crisis, offering hope for the future.

The Conference will be run through Zoom over four evenings from 12 to 15 October, 2020. 6–7pm AEDST / 8–9pm NZDT.

We invite proposals for presentations that engage with the conference theme and welcome submissions from independent scholars and practitioners, ECRs, postgraduate scholars and established academics. Each paper is to be 10 minutes long to allow for three presentations and question time each evening within the allocated hour. Offers of a roundtable discussion or non-conventional session will also be considered. The conference will be live streamed and recorded so it can be uploaded to the AANZEHN website for future viewing.

Please note that this conference replaces but will not replicate the planned AHA 2020 Green Stream.  Those wishing to present will need to resubmit their abstract or propose a different paper in keeping with the conference theme. We regret that the digital format will only permit the acceptance of 12 papers. 

Abstracts are due 1 September 2020.

Please send abstracts of up to 250 words and direct any questions to Dr Margaret Cook (mcookhistory@gmail.com)

Image: 2009 Victorian bushfires Acheron Way by Peter Campbell