Dr. Elly Dezateux, ‘Ruptures and attrition: the politics of environmental engineering in early modern England’ (Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Legacies of Colonialism, Christ Church). Recent scholarship has emphasised that sovereignty and central authority were expressed and fuelled by an expansion of environmental governance across early modern Europe and the Atlantic world. By examining the contested and precarious nature of state action to ‘improve’ English wetlands in this period, this paper identifies a more expansive environmental politics that often challenged institutional parameters and agendas.

Dr. Thomas Murphy, ‘The Problem of (Early Modern) ‘Nature’ (Career Development Fellow in French, New College). Understood as a turning point in the history of science, the emergence of an objectified, conquerable ‘nature’ in the 17th century poses an equally significant philological dilemma. Through case studies of translations of Vergil by Dryden and Du Bellay, this talk shows how a new meaning of ‘nature’ arises in translation, even where ‘natura’ is absent in the source, demonstrating the importance of humanistic
reading practices in the development of modern scientific thought.

Registration via our website is required if you would like complimentary lunch.