Climate and Environmental History Seminar

The interdisciplinary seminar convenes on selected Wednesdays every semester.

Mundus Subterraneus Vesuvius, Atanasius Kirscher, 1638.

Seminar Program Spring 2026

The seminar usually convenes on select Wednesdays 15.00–17:00, digitally through Zoom as well as on site at the Department of History, room D837, Stockholm University.

Convenors: Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Martin Skoglund, and Iva Lučić.

To be added to our e-mail list, contact fredrik.c.l@historia.su.se.

21 January: Juha Haavisto (KTH/University of Turku)

"Futures of Expected Growth: Economic Utility and Environmentalism in the Nordic Forest Thought in the Long Twentieth Century"

25 February: Torbjörn Ahlström (Lund University)

"How many plague pandemics? – Bioarchaeological perspectives from 4000 BCE to 1710 CE"

In collaboration with The Medieval Seminar.

11 March: Jawad Daheur (CNRS, Paris)

"German Colonisation in Central and Eastern Europe: An Environmental Perspective"

20 May: Kevin Noone and Alasdair Skelton

”Challenging the rejection of the Anthropocene from a geological perspective”

Seminar Program Autumn 2025

17 September: Anna Stjernström, Mid Sweden University

"Skapande förstörelse i natur- och tankelandskap: skogsresurserna och den norrländska landsbygdens industrialisering"
(Note: This seminar is held in Swedish)

15 October: Sanne de Jong, Radboud Universiteit

"Ash clouds, climate shocks, famine, and epidemics in 6th century Ostrogothic Italy and Eastern Roman Anatolia"

(In collaboration with the Medieval Seminar)

5 November: Charlotta Forss, Södertörn University

"North of the map: cartography and the image of the far north through history"

(In collaboration with the Early Modern Seminar)

3 December: Per Högselius, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm

"Carbon transnationalism: conflict and cooperation around coal in interwar Europe"

Seminar Program Spring 2025

29 January: Elaine Lin, National Taiwan Normal University

"Reconstruction of past tropical cyclones in East Asia – evidence from the REACHES database: frequency, intensity, and societal impacts"

26 February: Djoeke van Netten, University of Amsterdam

"Meeting Great White Bears. How to Understand Polar Bears from Western Europe, 1590s–1630s"

2 April: Johan Gärdebo, Uppsala University

"Climate Political Genealogy – The Case of Sweden’s Industrial Green Transition"

11 June: Benjamin Schmidt, University of Washington

"Skating Through Climate Change: Ice, Snow, and Patria in the Little Ice Age"

Seminar Program Autumn 2024

18 September: Paul J. Krusic (Stockholm University)

“Dendrochronology: The history within a tree”

23 October: Ingar Stene (Oslo University)

“What was the Anthropocene? Social, Cultural and Natural Entanglements in Early Modern Scandinavian History”

13 November: Cecilia Sjöholm (Södertörns University), Björn Billing (Gothenburg University) and Cecilia Rosengren (Gothenburg University)

“Cold imaginaries in Early Modern Northern Europe – natural philosophy, aesthetics and Arctic experiences”

5 December: Otso Kortekangas (Åbo Akademi University) och Christoffer Åhlman (Örebro University)

“How did we learn to think about forests the way we do? Meanings of forests and forestry in Swedish and Finnish school textbooks 1970–2020s”

Last updated: 2026-02-05

Source: Department of History