Centre for Environmental History

picture river landscape

Welcome to the Centre for Environmental History!


The Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna seeks to appoint a

Tenure-Track Professor in the field of Historical dimensions of the Anthropocene

Application Deadline: 10.01.2025

>Details

WCEH 2024: Environmental History Craftists Envision the Future

Quilt crafted at the World Congress in Environmental History (WCEH) in Oulu, initiated by Verena Winiwarter

Panel 1: "See, Buy, Fly. The Web of Life is Torn by Consumerism." Materials: netting knitted with essentials Organic Cotton by Rico, mustard colorway, color 003; plastic bag from Schiphol Airport Duty Free Shop, and 100% acrylic yarn from ON line Linie 50, Prima, color 0033 used for embroidery.

Panel 2: "Plastic Pollution in the Oceans has Reached Critical Mass", the latter symbolized by the sphere of Plutonium, approx the size of the critical mass for a nuclear bomb. Materials: Plastic Yarn (Plarn) for background (crochet), sphere knit from hand-dyed Merino Sock wool (scrap) and black embriodery stitched on.

Panel 3: "Lovely" crochet entirely from Plarn from the Toilet Paper Brand "Lovely" in several colors. The brownish Plarn is their "eco" - paper.

"Peace always has to be green" (knitted background made of black wool in stockinette stitch with moss stitch border, application made from gifted cotton fabric, dove cut out and stitched on with embroidery floss in green.

"No Life Raft will Persist under a Tsunami of oil", Material: blue background from Maker Space stash, crochet in black wool with white and silver added. Raft knitted in Indian Pillar stitch from cotton yarn.

This year’s World Congress in Environmental History (WCEH) in Oulu, Finland, hosted the first ever open maker space where participants made quilt pieces for a larger craftivist [craft activist] project entitled “Using the Past to Envision the Future". Verena Winiwarter, former head of ZUG and BOKU professor emerita of environmental history, initiated and supported this wonderful project. Towards the end of the Congress, she was also the one who handed over the finished quilt to Prof. Marko Mutanen from the University of Oulu on behalf of the environmental history “craftist” community. A successful project of diversity, creativity and hope between science and activism!

>More about the project

ICAG-Seminar in Leuven, "Vienna and the Danube", Vortrag Prof. Martin Schmid


CfP: Dissertant*innen-Tagung Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Umweltgeschichte 2025

Dieser CfP richtet sich an Dissertant:innen aus den Bereichen Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Umweltgeschichte sowie anderen Disziplinen mit wirtschafts-, sozial- oder umwelthistorisch relevanten Themen, die ihre Dissertationen entweder an einer österreichischen Universität verfassen, eine Zweitbetreuung an einer österreichischen Universität haben oder zu einem Thema mit Österreichbezug forschen. Die zweitägige Präsenz-Tagung bietet die Möglichkeit, Forschungsergebnisse zu präsentieren, zu diskutieren und sich mit anderen Dissertant:innen und mit Professor:innen zu vernetzen.

Veranstalter: Universität Innsbruck, Arbeitsbereich Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Umweltgeschichte (WSUG) in Kooperation mit Austrian Economic and Social Historians (AESH) und Environmental History Cluster Austria (EHCA)

Bewerbungen bis spätestens 01.10.2024 an: Sabine.Robic(at)uibk.ac.at

Ort: Universität Innsbruck
Zeit: 27.02.2025 - 28.02.2025

>Details

New WebGIS Application
Vienna’s landscape evolution 200 – 2010 CE and historical hydraulic constructions

As part of several interdisciplinary projects on the environmental history of Vienna’s waterbodies, the past landscape was reconstructed from 200 CE onwards. Step by step the historical states of the landscape were compiled. The resulting maps of Vienna’s landscape evolution from 200 to 2010 provide a solid basis for interpreting the environmental conditions for Vienna’s urban development and help to localise certain riverine and urban landmarks relevant for the history of Vienna.

Details
Click here for the WebGIS Application

The Austrian Danube River: Historical State and Current Situation

The 13th Annual Forum of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region will take place in Vienna on 20 and 21 June 2024. The Centre for Environmental History is contributing a large display panel showing how the Austrian Danube has changed since the middle of the 19th century. The numerous river restoration measures carried out over the last 30 years are also presented.

A smaller version of the approximately 4 metre long display panel can be downloaded here (jpg).

Information on the Annual Forum can be found at 13th Annual Forum of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region - EUSDR - Danube Strategy Point (danube-region.eu).

Results of the conference are available at Annual Fora - EUSDR - Danube Strategy Point (danube-region.eu).


Wachstum - Wie die Wirtschaftsidee nach Europa kam

BR Podcast / Radiowissen von Maike Brzoska, 11.1.2024

Im Interview Matthias Schmelzer und Robert Groß


Heritage Science an der BOKU

BOKU Forscherinnen und Forscher unterschiedlicher Disziplinen erforschen das Natur- und Kulturerbe Österreichs. Oft beschäftigen sie sich dabei mit Detailfragen. Doch erst durch interdisziplinäre Kooperationen können diese Erkenntnisse zu einem "großen Ganzen" zusammengefügt werden. Deshalb haben sich Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter der BOKU vernetzt und sind dem österreichweiten Netzwerk Heritage Science Austria beigetreten. Im Rahmen des Heritage Science Café wurden ausgewählte Projekte von BOKU Forscher*innen präsentiert. Der Film folgt den Forschenden ins Archiv und Labor, bei Feldforschungen, auf Dachböden und ins Bergwerk und zeigt, wie der Mensch unsere Umwelt bearbeitet, gestaltet und verändert hat. Der Blick zurück hilft uns, Antworten auf Herausforderungen der Zukunft zu finden.

>zum Film


Now Online

Umwelthistorische Datenbank Österreich
Environmental History Database Austria (EHDA)

Materialien zur Umweltgeschichte Österreichs Nr. 8

In 2004, the then newly founded Centre for Environmental History (ZUG) started to systematically search and collect bibliographical data on environmental historical literature in Austria. Over the years, the data set has grown to the 3,751 entries tabulated in this volume. Until 2019, the collection then named "Environmental History Database Austria (EHDA)" was available for online searches in a custom-made environment. EHDA entries comprise works with publication dates from 1945 until 2019 and include hard-to-find grey literature and academic qualification works. Since EHDA went online about 15 years ago, digitalisation has markedly impacted scientific publishing and research. Powerful finding aids, mostly with access to full texts, full-text searches and linked searches have become available. While EHDA has been regularly updated, because committed colleagues have invested time and expertise, we have not been able to modernize the tool in terms of search possibilities and links. We have therefore taken EHDA off the Internet. This volume of the “Materialien” makes the entire content of EHDA available to all interested parties as a fully searchable pdf document with carefully preserved tags. The introduction includes search tips and explains the search possibilities we have tried to preserve or are able to now offer under the new possibilities of full-text indexing and other search engine possibilities.

>zum Materialienband (pdf, 4,35 MB)

ICEHO Bulletin 19

Das Zentrum für Umweltgeschichte ist Mitglied von ICEHO und stellt das neueste Bulletin von ICEHO hier auch direkt zur Verfügung

>Bulletin 19 (pdf 2,4 MB)


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