Environmental History Resources

Exploring Environmental History podcast

Exploring Environmental History is the podcast about human societies and the environment in the past. The periodic programmes feature interviews with people working in the field, reports on conferences and discussions about the use and methods of environmental history. You can listen to these audiocasts on your own computer simply by clicking on the "Listen to podcast " links in the list below. Podcast of previous years can be found in the annual archives. The following years are available: 2006, 2007, 2008.

If you use a podcast aggregator like iTunes or Juice, you can subscribe to the podcast feed to automatically download the files for syncing to portable audio devices. Once you subscribe to Exploring Environmental History, you will automatically receive the lastest episode each time a new podcast is published. For more information on how to subscribe and podcasting clients, view the subscription instructions.

You can also follow the podcast on Twitter @EH_Resources. Sign up and use Twitter to leave comments or questions about the podcast.

Do you have comments about or suggestions related to the podcasts? Send us your feedback.

---

Podcast 30: Green Colonialism in Zimbabwe

Thursday, 7 January 2010

Environmental history of the British Empire seems to revolve around the theme of imperial forestry and Zimbabwe is no exception. In this edition of the podcast Vimbai Kwashirai, Lecturer in African History at Durham University, examines the debates and processes of woodland exploitation in Zimbabwe during the colonial period (1890-1980). He is doing this along the lines of Richard Grove’s thesis of Green Imperialism, but he goes beyond that by placing conservation and forest history into the broader social, political and economic history of Zimbabwe and the wider British Empire.

More information on Book Green Colonialism in Zimbabwe
Cambria Press website

Listen to current podcast... | Comment

---

Podcast 29: Historical climatology and the cultural memory of extreme weather events

Friday, 11 December 2009

In this episode Professor emeritus in history Christian Pfister, Fellow of the Oeschger Centre of Climate Research at the University of Bern examines the cultural memory of extreme weather events. In the past people experienced extreme weather in different ways depending on whether they lived in an agricultural society, an urban environment or in what profession they worked. Political and religious structures also influenced the response to weather related disasters. This coloured the narrative and memory of past extreme weather events and floods. Pfister demonstrates that this qualitative data is surprisingly objective and can be successfully used for climate reconstruction, producing surprising results.

Website mentioned in this podcast
Social, Economic and Environmental History Section, University of Bern (In German)

Listen to current podcast... | Comment

---

Podcasts 2009 >>