In recent years fears of climate change, resource consumption, and irreversible environmental damage have made us more aware of how profoundly embedded we are in the natural world. There is growing concern not only with how we impact weather, climate, and landscape, but also with how these impact us in return, affecting our daily activities, shaping our individual and collective behaviour, and contributing to the constitution of our identity in many complex ways. The goal of this conference is to historicise contemporary ecological discourse by exploring how this dynamic interaction between human beings and their lived environments was conceived of from Antiquity to the Enlightenment. While scholarly attention has traditionally focused on the development of environmental ideas from the eighteenth century to the present, there is still great scope for further investigation of ancient, medieval, and early modern attitudes to the environment. How did human beings relate to weather, climate, and landscape? What was the interplay between theory and practice—between environmental discourse on the one hand and practical attitudes to environmental management on the other? How did social and historical circumstances contribute to changes in environmental thought?

Keynote: Vladimir Jankovic (university of Manchester) "On Climate Fetishism"

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Registration is now open, deadline for registration is 9th May.

Please do not hesitate to contact the organisers should you have any queries: geographiesofman2014@gmail.com