29 November-2 December 2021, UNSW Sydney and State Library of NSW
The Australian Historical Association is convening its 39th AHA Conference at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. The AHA 2021 Conference will bring together scholars from across the disciplines with a shared interest in history. The conference is open to academics, students and community members wishing to share their research and hear about the latest developments in history studies. The conference will be held at and sponsored by UNSW Sydney and the State Library of NSW, and the theme for 2021 is Unfinished Business.
As in previous years, there will be a “Green Stream” in the Conference to highlight research in environmental history.
In the last 40 years environmental history has strengthened as a sub-discipline as scholars have challenged and re-cast dominant narratives to acknowledge nature as a historical agent. Through our work on forests and wetlands; agriculture, animals and mining; drought and flood; fire and ice; pollution, climate and more, we have considered the more-than-human world that has shaped our history. But despite this work, the issues that helped spawn environmental history remain unresolved. We have unfinished business to address. In these urgent times of planetary crisis, we must reflect on our scholarly practice and reconsider how our work can confront historical silences, intervene in political debate and shatter community complacency to create a better future. How can environmental historians engage with communities, governments and the public to help promote the urgency of our findings? As we seek to understand contemporary environmental issues by examining the ‘finished business’ of the past, the Green Stream invites individual papers, panel sessions and roundtable discussions. We welcome submissions from independent scholars and practitioners and proposals for a workshop session on teaching environmental history.
Please direct any questions to:
Dr Margaret Cook (mcook1@usc.edu.au) or
Dr Rohan Lloyd (rohan.lloyd464646@gmail.com)
Abstracts are due by 31 May 2021.
To submit please go to:
https://www.ahaconference2021.com/call-for-papers and select the environmental history network stream when submitting your abstract.
Image: © Katie Glaskin, Great Southern Land, 2017 (by permission of the artist)
