Environmental Exchanges is the Centre for Environmental History’s new seminar series. Launching in February 2022, Environmental Exchanges is an opportunity to showcase and discuss innovative new research that engages with key themes in environmental history.

Each year’s seminar program is organised around a single broad theme. The theme for the inaugural series in 2022 is Oceans. Each seminar will engage with this theme in distinct ways, and we aim to share the diversity of times, places, methods, and perspectives that historians explore in their work on oceans, seas, and coasts.

Seminars will be held approximately once a month on Thursdays. All seminars in 2022 will be hosted simultaneously online via Zoom and in-person at the ANU’s Acton campus (subject to COVID restrictions). To receive the Zoom link for a particular seminar, follow the ‘Registration’ link on the seminar’s event page.

We welcome enquiries related to attending or presenting at future seminars in the Environmental Exchanges series. Please contact Dr Rohan Howitt for further information.

To be notified of upcoming seminars in this series, register for the Centre for Environmental History mailing list. 

Environmental Exchanges Series 1 (2022): Oceans

17 February 2022: Professor Coll Thrush (University of British Columbia), ‘Wakes: Maritime Violence, Colonial Origin Stories, and Unfinished Business on the Northwest Coast’

31 March 2022: Dr Sarah A. Bendall (Australian Catholic University), ‘Whaling, Consumer Culture and Changing Understandings of the Natural World in Early Modern Europe’

28 April 2022: Associate Professor Jakobina Arch (Whitman College), 'Mitigating Risks of Coastal Sailing: Adaptations to Oceanic Dangers in Early-Modern Japan'

16 June 2022: Dr Alessandro Antonello (Flinders University), 'Antarctic Krill and the Temporalities of Oceanic Abundance'

Further seminars will be announced throughout the year.