Reclaiming Land for the Future: Coal, Environmentalism, and Population in Post-1945 Britain
Dr Andrew Seaton will be discussing a chapter from his book project, The Ends of Coal, which is a wide-ranging environmental history of the resource’s impacts and legacies in Britain and the world since 1800. This talk considers the National Coal Board’s expansive ‘land reclamation’ initiatives after 1945. These projects facilitated surprising connections between one of Europe’s largest fossil fuel industries and environmentalists, particularly by creating ‘productive’ land that might alleviate potential scarcity caused by ‘overpopulation’. The talk considers the practical dimensions of the Coal Board’s land reclamation, recovers its framing and reception, and explains how initial justifications fell away in the 1980s.

The chapter will be discussed by Professor Danny Dorling (Geography, Oxford).

Dr Andrew Seaton is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at University College London. He is a historian of modern Britain with interests in politics, social history, medicine and the environment. Andrew’s first book Our NHS: A History of Britain’s Best-Loved Institution (Yale University Press, 2023) won the American Historical Association’s Morris D. Forkosch Prize and was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize.
Date: 4 December 2025, 12:00
Venue: Seminar room 56
Speakers: Dr Andrew Seaton (History, University College London), Professor Danny Dorling (Geography, Oxford)
Organising department: The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH)
Organiser: Environmental Humanities Research Hub (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: envhums@torch.ox.ac.uk
Part of: Environmental Humanities Research Hub
Booking required?: Not required
Booking url: https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/environmental-humanities-research-hub
Audience: Public
Editor: Wallerand Bazin