Environmental History
Description: Environmental history investigates humans’ changing ecological entanglements over time. Its practitioners work over different time periods and geographical regions and draw on methodological ideas and practices from various scholarly traditions such as history, archaeology, geography, visual art and the natural sciences.

This interdisciplinary approach is what makes environmental history such an exhilarating field, yet it can also be what divides it. Environmental historians often belong to different departments and faculties, and at Oxford they are yet to share a sub-institutional affiliation. Hence, they are not always informed of relevant work done by their colleagues within the same University.

The Oxford Environmental History Network wishes to foster a virtual community of environmental historians in Oxford. The aim of the network is threefold:


To connect researchers confronting similar conceptual and methodological challenges, even if working across different regions and time periods
To showcase environmental history research being undertaken at Oxford and elsewhere
To publicise relevant events and opportunities occurring both at Oxford as well as internationally

Talks:

Monday 13 October 2025

“I call them all by the Malabar name”: communicating colonial flora before universal nomenclature
Date: 13 October 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker : Madeline White (Oxford)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Monday 20 October 2025

The Science of Why Human Excrement Matters. Pierre Leroux and the circulus
Date: 20 October 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker : Michael Drolet (Oxford)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Monday 27 October 2025

Regulation of Anglo-American medical education and its effects on educational cultures
Date: 27 October 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker : Susan Lamb (Ottawa)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Monday 3 November 2025

From Teatime to TV: 200 Years of Science Communication at the Royal Institution
Date: 3 November 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker : Katy Duncan (Royal Institution)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Monday 10 November 2025

Multispecies Interactions in bridging Folk and Biomedical Knowledge: hookworm, roundworm and wormweed in Jamaica, 1913-1936
Date: 10 November 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker : Jonathan David Roberts (Leeds)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Monday 17 November 2025

Baconian Alchemy: Making Gold in the Novum organum and the Sylva (Co-organised with the research project NOTCOM, at the Maison Française d’Oxford)
Date: 17 November 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker : Daniel Garber (Princeton)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Monday 24 November 2025

Marie Curie and public histories of science
Date: 24 November 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker s: Sarah Dry (Oxford), Stéphane van Damme (CNRS/MFO)
Venue Details: Maison Française d'Oxford, 2-10 Norham Rd, Oxford OX2 6SE
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Monday 1 December 2025

Anxious nurses and forgotten patients: psychoanalysing the hospital in mid-century Britain
Date: 1 December 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker : Grace Whorrall-Campbell (Oxford)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

This list contains talks from the following series:
History of Science, Medicine, Technology, and Environment Work in Progress Group
Oxford Centre for the History of Science Medicine & Technology (OCHSMT) Seminars and Events