The World Congress of Environmental History (WCEH) will take place from 19 to 23 August 2024 in Oulu, Finland. A gathering of environmental historians and allied scholars from around the world, the conference will focus on the theme of transitions, transformations, and transdisciplinarity. The WCEH is a hybrid conference, allowing both in-person and virtual participation.
Below is a round-up of offerings with clear attention to Canada or northern North America, as well as offerings by scholars with strong connections to Canada. If we have mistakenly omitted your paper, poster, or workshop, our apologies. Please leave us a comment or send a message, and we will be glad to add your event to the list.
To learn more, including the locations of events and information about virtual attendance, check out the conference website.
Monday 19 August, 10:00am EEST (Eastern European Summer Time)
Towards a successful understanding of ‘Failure’? A PhD and early-career researchers session
Convenors: Joffy Conolly, Roger Norum, and Audrey Paradis. Invited Panel Speakers: Marco Armiero (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Anna Krzywoszynska (University of Oulu), Monica Vasile (Maastricht University)
Monday 19 August, 13:00pm EEST, Session 1
Challenges of recovering place names in a hydropower landscape: the Nisichawayasihk oral history project of northern Manitoba, Canada
Matt Dyce (The University of Winnipeg)
Developing third world oil fields: Maurice Strong and the plan to turn importers into producers
Odinn Melsted (Maastricht University)
River ice, permafrost, and other melting matter in the Mackenzie delta, Canada
Franz Krause (University of Cologne)
Crevasses in the cryosphere: the environmental histories, characteristics, and aesthetics of Sioqqap Sermia
Isabelle Gapp (University of Aberdeen); Lauren Rawlins (University of York)
Place, change, and temporalities in and of motion: bringing nature into the classroom
Ramya Swayamprakash (Grand Valley State University)
Tuesday 20 August, 9:00am EEST, Session 3
Northern Ontario forests and the legacies of extractive industry and settler colonialism
Samira Saramo (Migration Institute of Finland)
Regional fish, local invasions: the case of smallmouth bass in Algonquin Park, Ontario
William Knight (Ingenium Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation)
The nature of decay in a settler city
Matt Dyce (The University of Winnipeg); Jonathan Peyton (University of Manitoba)
How can transnational history of 20th century Arctic science reveal new insights about the production and dissemination of knowledge?
Ronald E Doel (Florida State University)
Tuesday 20 August, 14:15pm EEST, session 4
Transitioning towards viability in fisheries commons: a historical analysis
Prateep Nayak (University of Waterloo, Canada)
Labour in parks: from invisibility to integration
Alison Beale (Simon Fraser University)
Gastrocolonialism and the story of wild rice
Jessica Milgroom (Institute for Sociology and Peasant Studies, University of Cordoba, Spain)
The role of environment in the long-lasting debates over Arctic railways
Juha Saunavaara (Hokkaido University)
Refuge from the cold
Nanna Karsikas (Tampere University); Chloe Kiernicki (Tampere University); Ruchira Liyanage (Tampere University)
The atmospheric legacy of European imperialism. Diplomacy, war and German weather balloon stations from the Atlantic to the Arctic, 1900-1914
Robert-Jan Wille (Freudenthal Institute, Utrecht University)
Wednesday 21 August, 16:00pm EEST, poster session
Caring for the land and for ourselves: exploring the revitalization of traditional foods and medicines through participatory film with youth and elders from Sc’ianew first nation
Hallie Rounthwaite (University of Kent)
Wednesday 21 August, 16:00pm EEST, session 5
Animal (in)sights and sounds: Ernest Thompson Seton and the 20th-c. ecological imagination
Suzanne Zeller (Wilfrid Laurier University)
Discourses soil conservation and soil health during the second American agricultural revolution, 1945-1970
Katherine Lawless (Huron University College)
Nature’s deep freeze: frozen mammoths, refrigeration technology, and the Arctic as natural refrigerator 1850-1950
Rebecca Woods (University of Toronto)
From skating on the lake to “Snowmageddon”: changing expectations of winter weather in the age of anthropogenic climate change
Alexander Hall (McMaster University)
The icy earth / Swung blind and blackening: Tambora, the summer of 1816, and the re-writing of a disaster
Nayani Jensen (University of Toronto)
An asbestos wonderland: simulating snow in the 20th century
Jessica van Horssen (McMaster University)
Roundtable: Pushing the Envelope: Doing Environmental History Differently; Convenor: Colin Coates (Glendon College, York University); Discussant; Jessica DeWitt (Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE); Panelist, Ramya Swayamprakash (Grand Valley State University, Co-creation and care: re-learning what it means to do history
Thursday 22 August, 9:00am EEST, session 6
Oral history of Dnipro wetlands and Kakhovka reservoir: new-old methodology for talking about the Ukrainian environment
Anna Olenenko (University of Alberta)
Ukrainian farmer steals Russian tank: wartime memes (re)narrating Ukrainian agricultural histories and futures
Zenia Kish (Ontario Tech University)
Hydro modernism north: the political structuring of Québec’s James bay project
Marie-Claude Prémont (ENAP)
Thursday 22 August, 14:15pm EEST, Session 7
Researching autochthonous bees in Transcarpathia, Ukraine: on the challenges of practicing a politics of refusal
Tanya Richardson (Wilfrid Laurier University)
The survivance of water and rock: Anishinaabe thought worlds, other-than-human personhood, and the Trent-Severn waterway
Benjamin Kapron (York University)
National plans, national rivers? Rivers, knowledge gaps, and survival grasps in India, 1950-1980
Ramya Swayamprakash (Grand Valley State University)
The flow of indigenous fish skin heritage between Arctic states
Elisa Palomino (Smithsonian Institution)
My unlikely path to microhistory: the Arctic refuge, the crying Indian, and environmental storytelling
Finis Dunaway (Trent University)
Friday 23 August, 9:00am EEST, Session 8
The impact of settler colonial fisheries on ancestral clam beaches in the Salish sea, 1880-1940
Patrick Hayes (University of Victoria)
Caring for the land and for ourselves: exploring the revitalization of traditional foods and medicines through participatory film with youth and elders from sc’ianew first nation
Hallie Rounthwaite (University of Kent)
The fodders of confederation: livestock and forage practices in eastern Canada, 1871-1931
Joshua MacFadyen (University of Prince Edward Island)
Diminishing harvests: beekeeper responses to changing honeybee forage in north America’s Great Lakes region, 1880-1940
Jennifer Bonnell (York University)
The problems of liberal energy: coal and the making of modern Canada, 1870-1950
Andrew Watson (University of Saskatchewan)
The she-bear wailed as if mourning: dogs, polar bears and gendered trauma in the compositions of Nansen’s Farthest North
Caroline Abbott (Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE))
Environmental Historians for a Sustainable Academia, panelists: Ramya Swayamprakash (Grand Valley State University); Graeme Wynn (University of British Columbia)
Fell short of expectations: the problem of Arctic ‘timelessness’ in twentieth century rhythms science
Kristin Hussey (Newcastle University)
Adaptation to weather in Arctic everyday contexts
Hannah Strauss-Mazzullo (Arctic Centre, University of Lapland)
Expeditions and exhibitions: the legacies of two 19th century ethnographic collections from the North American Arctic
Elizabeth Walsh (University of Cambridge)
Making the devilfish coast: gray whales and people in the north Pacific
Jason Colby (University of Victoria)
Friday 23 August, 14:15pm EEST, session 9
Private property, indigenous land, and nature on the Canadian commodity frontier, 1869-1900
Alice Gorton (Columbia University)
Historical ecology of the Pacific cod
Loren McClenachan (University of Victoria)
The southern office of an Arctic mine: locating mining activities in southern office headquarters
Andrew Bateman (Toronto Metropolitan University)
Polar voyages telling about natural and cultural elements of Arctic seasonality in Christoph Ransmayrs novel “The terror of ice and darkness” (1984)
Laura Löslein (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main)
Feature Image: “Black-throated Diver, Oulu, Finland 02 (15195370798)” by Francesco Veronesi from Italy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
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There is also a session 10:00 Monday (Oulu time) especially for early-career scholars, “Towards a successful understanding of ‘failure’?” co-hosted by local organizer Roger Norum, Joffy Conolly, and Canadian expat Audrey Paradis! “How might we reclaim and redefine failure to promote a more compassionate ecology of academia?”