Tuesday, 7 October 2025

Berlin Brandenburg Colloquium on Environmental History

Monday, 13.10.2025         Timothy Moss (Berlin): (in German)

Book Launch - Meet the Authors: Grounding Berlin. Ecologies of a Technopolis, 1871 to the Present

In Kooperation mit dem Forschungsschwerpunkt „Umwelt, Klima, Energie" im Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstraße 191, 3. OG, Simmelsaal und online 

4-6 p.m. Berlin time


Monday, 15.12.2025         Žiga Zwitter (Ljubljana): 

Hay Meadows in the Alps, 16th–Mid-20th Centuries: A Material and Cultural Environmental History, and “Usable Pasts”


Monday, 19.01.2026         Rebecca Janzen (Columbia, S.C., USA): 

Mining Religion: Religious Sites and Extractive Industries across the Americas


Monday, 09.02.2026         Tetiana Perga (Berlin):

Waste, Power, and Ideology: Recycling in the Early Soviet Ukraine

In Kooperation mit dem Forschungsschwerpunkt „Umwelt, Klima, Energie" im Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstraße 191, 7. OG, Tillionsaal und online

Ort:                                        ONLINE on ZOOM: https://hu-berlin.zoom-x.de/j/65558796751?pwd=U3hkYVMzTDkrc3lGdk5nekdGL2l6Zz09

Meeting-ID: 655 5879 6751; Passwort: 264162

Zeit:                                       6-8 p.m. Berlin Time

Kontakt:                                Astrid M. Kirchhof astrid.m.kirchhof@hu-berlin.de


Jan-Henrik Meyer meyer@zzf-potsdam.de

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Montag, 13.10.2025         Timothy Moss (Berlin): 

Book Launch - Meet the Authors: Grounding Berlin. Ecologies of a Technopolis, 1871 to the Present

In Kooperation mit dem Forschungsschwerpunkt „Umwelt, Klima, Energie" im Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstraße 191, 3. OG, Simmelsaal und online Abweichend: 16-18 Uhr


Abstract:


Das jüngst erschienene Buch Grounding Berlin. Ecologies of a Technopolis, 1871 to the Present (Hg. Timothy Moss) ist ein innovativer Beitrag zwischen Umwelt-, Stadt- und Technikgeschichte. Es  untersucht die Rolle Berlins als Pionierstadt für urbane Technologien und Stadtökologie von 1871 bis heute und zeigt, wie tiefgreifende Eingriffe in Energieversorgung, Wasser, Abfallentsorgung und Flächennutzung Berlin zu einem internationalen Vorreiter der technologischen Moderne machten – von der Industrialisierung über die Weimarer Republik und die Zeit der Teilung bis hin zu Nachhaltigkeits- und Dekarbonisierungs-Strategien der Gegenwart. Berlin wird dabei als Fallbeispiel genutzt, um die komplexen Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Gesellschaft, Natur und Technologie in Städten sichtbar zu machen.

Dieser Book Launch bietet neben der Einführung in das Konzept des Buches, auch die Gelegenheit zur vertieften Diskussion einzelner Beiträge mit verschiedenen Autorinnen und Autoren. Die Veranstaltung findet auf Deutsch statt und ist auch online zugänglich.


Kurzbiographie: 

Timothy Moss ist Senior Researcher am Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys) an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin und Honorarprofessor an der Leibniz Universität Hannover. Seit über 30 Jahren erforscht er städtische Energie- und Wassersysteme aus geschichts- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Perspektiven. Kennzeichnend für seine Forschungen ist die Verzahnung von historischen Infrastrukturstudien mit aktuellen Debatten über soziotechnische und urbane Transformationen. Sein Buch Remaking Berlin. A History of the City through Infrastructure, 1920-2020 erschien 2020 bei MIT Press. Aktuell leitet er ein interaktives DFG-Projekt über „usable pasts“ der Berliner Infrastrukturgeschichte (mit den Schwerpunkten Energie und Wasser) als Impulsgeber für heutige Transformationsprozesse.


Montag, 15.12.2025         Žiga Zwitter (Ljubljana): 

Hay Meadows in the Alps, 16th–Mid-20th Centuries: A Material and Cultural Environmental History, and “Usable Pasts”


Abstract 

The forthcoming 980-page volume Historical Biodiversity in the Alps: Grassland Agroecosystems in the Last Millennium (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, autumn 2025), written in cooperation with botanist Leonid Rasran, will be presented by the first author. The book combines novel research insights—based on archival and published primary sources, oral-history interviews, historical artefacts and paintings, fieldwork, and interdisciplinary botanical and agronomic interpretations—and literature to synthesize a material and cultural environmental history of hay meadows in the Alps. The volume contains the following chapters: (1) Introduction, (2) Brief phytosociological overview, (3) Fluctuations in grassland area in the Alps over the last millennium, (4) Natural and nature-induced environmental changes in grasslands, (5) Historical changes in livestock size and feed demand, (6) Selected historical practices of species-rich grassland management and their ecological impacts, (7) Introduction of plant species to grasslands in the Alps through human activities in the context of economic history, political history, and the history of botany and ornamental plants, (8) Gathering of grassland plants and lichens, (9) Abandonment of grasslands in the Alps: a case study with an emphasis on the role of plant species composition, (10) Applicability of grassland history in the twenty-first century, with an emphasis on meadows, and (11) Conclusions. A selection of historical contents will be presented, enabling the presentation of a few examples of “usable pasts” in the 21st century, when species-rich grasslands are being rapidly lost.


Short Bio: 


Žiga Zwitter, PhD, University of Ljubljana, graduated in history and geography, and obtained his PhD in history in 2015. He is an assistant professor of early modern history. Since his postdoctoral project at the Vienna’s Institute of Social Ecology (2016–2017), his research has focused on long-term environmental history and historical ecology of grasslands in the Alps. Together with botanist Leonid Rasran, they wrote the interdisciplinary volume Historical Biodiversity in the Alps: Grassland Agroecosystems in the Last Millennium (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, autumn 2025). Zwitter has been representative of the European Society for Environmental History’s Dinaric Region and he is recently elected president of the Historical Association of Slovenia. He was visiting professor at the University of Innsbruck (2024) and at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (2025).


Montag, 19.01.2026         Rebecca Janzen (Columbia, S.C., USA): 

Mining Religion: Religious Sites and Extractive Industries across the Americas


Abstract:


This presentation is part of a larger project called Mining Religion, a single-authored monograph that examines the complex relationship between Catholic religious devotion in churches and shrines near mines – looking at mining saints, and church buildings, and altars inside of mines in Oruro, Bolivia; Diamantina, Brazil; Santiago de Cuba, Cuba; Real de Catorce, Mexico. It situates this religious veneration in its historical context in relationship to booms and busts in mining and relates the popularity of certain saints (and not others) to support from government tourism programs, and the UNESCO world heritage program. The presentation speak to the relationship between the natural world, the mining industry, and religious practice and offer a case study from Mexico. 

The presentation engages with questions such as: what does the environment afford religious practice? How does the mountainous and desert-like space in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, as well as copper mining, relate to Huichol Indigenous pilgrimages, spiritual engagement with peyote, and Catholic pilgrimages? Moreover, how have the booms and busts associated with mining, and, more recently, tourism, affected the local environment and the people who live there?


Short Bio: 


Rebecca Janzen is Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina – Columbia and a Humboldt Foundation Experienced Research Fellow at the Deutsches Bergbau Museum (2025-2027). She is a scholar of gender, disability and religious studies whose research focuses on excluded populations in Latin America. She has written four books about literature, film, religion and law in Mexico: The National Body in Mexican Literature: Collective Challenges to Biopolitical Control (2015), Liminal Sovereignty: Mennonites and Mormons in Mexican Culture (2018), Unholy Trinity: State, Church and Film in Mexico (2021), and Unlawful Violence: Law and Cultural Production in 21st Century Mexico (2022). 


Montag, 09.02.2026         Tetiana Perga (Berlin):

Waste, Power, and Ideology: Recycling in the Early Soviet Ukraine

In Kooperation mit dem Forschungsschwerpunkt „Umwelt, Klima, Energie" im Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstraße 191, 7. OG, Tillionsaal und online


Abstract:

This paper explores the features of the early Soviet waste regime in the Ukrainian SSR during the 1920s and early 1930s, examining waste recycling as a survival strategy for enterprises, institutions, private entrepreneurs, charitable organizations, and ordinary citizens amid chronic raw material shortages, forced industrialization and collectivization, social transformations, the project of forming the “new Soviet person,” and the Holodomor of 1932–1933. How did they compete for this limited yet valuable resource during the “waste fever” that swept across Ukraine at the time? What practices did they employ in this intense competition? Which factors determined success and failure for businesses and individuals? The sheds light on how everyday survival strategies, competition, ingenuity, ambition, and practical knowledge shaped the functioning of the waste collection and recycling system in early Soviet Ukraine and it is built on a wide range of primary sources.


 


Short Bio: 


Tetiana Perga received her Ph.D. from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine, and has worked at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine for over 30 years. She has participated in international research programs funded by DAAD, DFG, the Volkswagen Foundation, the Max Weber Foundation, the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture (Germany), and the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Currently, she is affiliated with the Technical University of Berlin. She is a member of the European Society for Environmental History and the Leo Baeck Institute Research Group in Jewish Environmental History, serves as an expert for the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and a member of editorial boards of two Ukrainian academic journals. She is also a participant in UGHI, where she is working on the excremental history of Ukraine. Tetiana Perga has presented at numerous international conferences and is the author of 140 articles, co-author of eight books, and author of two monographs, focusing on diverse aspects of environmental history.


 


Contact Information

Astrid M. Kirchhof astrid.m.kirchhof@hu-berlin.de


Jan-Henrik Meyer meyer@zzf-potsdam.de


Sunday, 5 October 2025

Petra Brandejsová Tomsová – Tomáš W. Pavlíček: A trip around the world. The flooded photographic diary of Jiří Viktor Daneš

 Petra Brandejsová Tomsová – Tomáš W. Pavlíček: Cesta kolem světa. Zatopený fotografický deník Jiřího Viktora Daneše [A trip around the world. The flooded photographic diary of Jiří Viktor Daneš]. PRAHA: MUA CAS, Academia 2025. ISBN: 978-80-88611-30-1 


Kniha přibližuje fotografickou činnost geografa a cestovatele Jiřího V. Daneše (1880–1928) v letech 1920–1923 v Oceánii, Tichomoří a Severní Americe. Nejprve zdokumentoval cestu do Austrálie, kam se v roce 1920 vydal se svou ženou převzít úřad československého konzula. Další snímky vznikly během jeho pobytu v Austrálii a při výpravách na okolní ostrovy. Fotoaparátem pak zachytil také cestu zpět do vlasti přes tichomořské ostrovy, Japonsko a Kanadu.

Druhou část příběhu Danešových fotografií tvoří jejich osud po roce 2002, kdy byl tento celek poškozen povodní. Skrze fotografie a Danešův cestopis autoři rekonstruují jeho pohled na navštívené země, domorodé kultury či exotickou přírodu. Fotografický deník reflektuje i dobové důsledky migrace, kolonialismu, masové turistiky, ale i důsledky první světové války. Díky digitalizaci a za pomoci restaurátorek tak autoři vdechli fotografiím druhý život.



Seminarium „Naukoznawstwo: historia i współczesność” // Seminar "Science Studies: History and the Present"

 Seminarium „Naukoznawstwo: historia i współczesność” // Seminar "Science Studies: History and the Present"


Zapraszamy do udziału w cyklicznych spotkaniach Pracowni Naukoznawstwa IHN PAN, realizowanych w ramach Seminarium „Naukoznawstwo: historia i współczesność”, które w roku akademickim 2025/2026 odbywa się za pośrednictwem platformy ZOOM. Osoby zainteresowane uczestnictwem w Seminariach proszone są o kontakt mailowy z dr. Mateuszem Hübnerem (mhubner@ihnpan.pl lub mateuszhubner@protonmail.com).

13 października 2025 r. od godz. 16:15

dr hab. Hadrian Ciechanowski (Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu)

Wpływ biurokracji i biurokratyzacji na akademię po II wojnie światowej w świetle egodokumentów naukowców

17 listopada 2025 r. od godz. 16:15

dr Agnieszka Raubo (Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu)

Retrakcje – „blizny” po nierzetelnościach i błędach naukowców

8 grudnia 2025 r. od godz. 16:15

prof. dr hab. Bożena Płonka-Syroka (Collegium Witelona Uczelnia Państwowa)

Historia polsko-tureckiej współpracy naukowej w dziedzinie historii medycyny (2002–2024)

15 grudnia 2025 r. od godz. 16:15

dr Tomasz Siewierski (Instytut Historii Nauki im. Ludwika i Aleksandra Birkenmajerów PAN)

Akademickie karty życiorysu Marii Turlejskiej

19 stycznia 2026 r. od godz. 16:15

dr Jan Surman (Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

Czechosłowacki naukowiec. Historia nauki i digital humanities

23 lutego 2026 r. od godz. 16:15

dr hab. Maciej Zdanek (prof. Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego)

Wymogi systemu, ścieżki karier a praca badawcza na dawnych uniwersytetach. Przykład profesorów Uniwersytetu Krakowskiego XV-XVI wieku

16 marca 2026 r. od godz. 16:15

dr Milena Hübner (Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu)

Miejsce biedermeieru w historii sztuki – proces formowania pojęcia oraz jego losy

13 kwietnia 2026 r. od godz. 16:15

dr hab. Tadeusz Rutkowski (profesor Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego)

Wydział Nauki i Oświaty KC PZPR w latach 1959–1989: próba charakterystyki modelu partyjnego kierowania nauką i jego zmian

18 maja 2026 r. od godz. 16:15

dr hab. Piotr Majewski (profesor Uniwersytetu Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego w Warszawie)

Nauczanie tak absolutnie liberalne, jak… w dobie najcięższej niewoli. Uniwersytet czasu niemieckiej okupacji (1939-45): o przetrwaniu i reformowaniu

15 czerwca 2026 r. od godz. 16:15

dr Mateusz Hübner (Instytut Historii Nauki im. Ludwika i Aleksandra Birkenmajerów PAN)

Stanisław Estreicher – osiągnięcia i niepowodzenia na polu organizacji nauki 


History of Medicine in Russia: Ethics and Politics. Moscow: Practical Medicine, 2025

 О.С. Нагорных, Н.Ю. Пивоваров, В.В. Тихонов, Н.П. Шок: История медицины в России: этика и политика. М.: Практическая медицина, 2025. //  O.S. Nagornykh, N.Yu. Pivovarov, V.V. Tikhonov, N.P. Shok: History of Medicine in Russia: Ethics and Politics. Moscow: Practical Medicine, 2025.

OA: https://tinyurl.com/55v7y3fn

Монография является результатом пятилетней научной работы участников проекта Российского научного фонда «Проблемы биоэтики в историческом контексте и социокультурной динамике общества» (№ 18-78-10018-продление). Исследование опыта советской медицины, значимых этических и политических аспектов в ее истории, различных международных соглашений и коммуникаций в  области здравоохранения в условиях холодной войны не  только важно с точки зрения социальной истории науки, но и помогает актуализировать современные тренды проблемного поля биоэтики, международных отношений в области медицины и здоровья, а также роль отечественного опыта в их формировании и развитии.

Thursday, 2 October 2025

Katja Bruisch: Burning Swamps: Peat and the Forgotten Margins of Russia’s Fossil Economy

 Katja Bruisch: Burning Swamps: Peat and the Forgotten Margins of Russia’s Fossil Economy (Cambridge University Press 2025). ISBN: 9781009603089 


Book description

This groundbreaking environmental history recounts the story of Russia's fossil economy from its margins. Unpacking the forgotten history of how peat fuelled manufacturing industries and power plants in late Imperial and Soviet Russia, Katja Bruisch provides a corrective to more familiar historical narratives dominated by coal, oil, and gas. Attentive to the intertwined histories of matter and labor during a century of industrial peat extraction, she offers a fresh perspective on the modern Russian economy that moves beyond the socialism/capitalism binary. By identifying peat extraction in modern Russia as a crucial chapter in the degradation of the world's peatlands, Bruisch makes a compelling case for paying attention to seemingly marginal places, people, and resources as we tell the histories of the planetary emergency.


Reviews

‘Burning Swamps offers remarkable insights on the social, economic, and environmental life of the Soviet Union by recasting the global history of fossil fuels from the standpoint of peat extraction. Bruisch brilliantly foregrounds unanticipated ecologies, labor and gender inequities, regional and seasonal dependencies, and widespread irritations.'


Andy Bruno - Indiana University Bloomington


‘By recovering the history of Russia's reliance on peat as an industrial fuel from imperial through Soviet times, Katja Bruisch's Burning Swamps helps us appreciate just how central the margins can be to the rise of the fossil economy. A wonderful study relevant to all interested in energy, environment, and the endurance of extractivist states.'


Victor Seow - author of Carbon Technocracy


CfP: Carceral Frontiers – Penal Histories of the Russian Far East and Beyond

 CfP: Carceral Frontiers – Penal Histories of the Russian Far East and Beyond

International Workshop, 29-30 January 2026, Helsinki


Organizers: Anna Mazanik (Max Weber Network Eastern Europe) and Mikhail Nakonechnyi (ERC Project ‘Manipulation of Health Data in Liberal and Authoritarian Custodial Institutions’, University of Helsinki,)


Deadline for proposal submission: 17 October 2025.

The Russian Far East and the wider Pacific world have long been important to the history of exile, forced labor, and incarceration. From the Tsarist katorga and exile system to Stalin’s Gulag complexes, the region served both as a penal periphery and as a crucial arena for state projects of colonization, industrialization, and social control. Its remoteness, harsh frontier environments, and proximity to the Pacific also shaped distinctive practices of penal governance and record-keeping, particularly in how prisoner health, mortality, and mobility were documented, managed, or concealed. At the same time, the operation of penal institutions, although often excluded from the public history narratives, had a profound impact on the social composition, infrastructural development, economies, and ecologies of the Far East and is essential for understanding the past and present of the region.


This workshop seeks to bring together scholars working on the penal history of the Russian Far East and beyond, situating the region within a global comparative perspective. We welcome papers on all matters carceral, including the histories of penal systems, special settlements, and prisoners-of-war camps, histories of prison medicine, human-environment relations, and wider forms of penal modalities in the Russian Far East, Siberia, and neighboring regions. Comparative and transnational contributions extending to colonial, postcolonial, and Pacific contexts are especially encouraged. We particularly invite approaches that illuminate broader questions of state legitimacy, institutional accountability, and the global history of punishment through the lens of mortality, health, environment, and carceral experience.


We intend to publish an edited volume based on the workshop.


The workshop will take place in Helsinki on 29-30 January 2026. It is organized by the Max Weber Network Eastern Europe and the ERC Project “Death, Smoke, And Mirrors: Manipulation of Health Data in Liberal and Authoritarian Custodial Institutions” at the University of Helsinki. The organizers will cover the accommodation and travel costs for the invited participants.


Please submit your paper proposals (ca. 300 words) and a short biography to Anna Mazanik (anna.mazanik@mws-osteuropa.org) and Mikhail Nakonechnyi (mikhail.nakonechnyi@helsinki.fi) by 17 October 2025.


Wednesday, 1 October 2025

HPSCESEE featured in FeedSpot Top 15 History Of Science Blogs

Apparently, hps.cesee has been selected by someone as one of the Top 15 History Of Science Blogs on the web. Sharing this mostly because this link gives a nice list of history of science blogs:   https://bloggers.feedspot.com/history_of_science_blogs/

Jan (Surman)

Berlin Brandenburg Colloquium on Environmental History

Monday, 13.10.2025         Timothy Moss (Berlin): (in German) Book Launch - Meet the Authors: Grounding Berlin. Ecologies of a Technopolis, ...