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Heritage, Environment, Spaces & Places

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This strand explores different kinds of spaces and places and the many connections between them, including through the wider lens of public history and the heritage sector (broadly defined). It embraces work on the movement and exchange of people, materials and ideas across spaces, whether through migration, trade, or conflict. It also engages with research examining the role of different environments – from landscapes and seascapes to cities, villages and more – within social life. The strand has also recently incorporated ‘Heritage’ more prominently in its focus and welcomes research exploring heritage sites and memory, as well as submissions that focus on public engagement with space and place and heritage practice.

We welcome papers that focus on specific situations, actors, contexts, institutions and comparative studies. Papers, panels and posters may deal with any period and any part of the world, those with a transnational theme, focus on heritage practice, or are interdisciplinary papers spanning history (global, local, transnational), geography and other fields in the humanities and social science are especially welcomed.

Proposals from those working outside academia are particularly welcomed.

This coming year we are also wanting to present at least one panel of papers on the theme of ‘Everyday Environments’. It is now nearly two decades since Stephen Mosely’s article ‘Common Ground: Integrating Social and Environmental History’ argued that ‘it is vital that social history now includes the important theme of human-environment relations among its research priorities.’ But how far have social historians moved in this direction? What is the present state of investigation in terms of social histories of environmental change?

Our point of departure for these considerations is the question of the everyday environment, or of everyday environmentalism, which Alex Loftus identified as a key component of contemporary environmental politics and change. We seek papers that consider the issues of the energetics of everyday life; the everyday rhythms of environmental change; relationship between embodied surrounding and everyday experience and sensation, or other points of intersection between everyday life and the natural world broadly conceived.

If you are interested in contributing to this panel, please contact Timothy Cooper (T.Cooper@exeter.ac.uk) or Henry Irving (henry.irving@leedsbeckett.ac.uk) with an outline proposal by 9 December 2024.

Strand Convenors