The 2nd International Workshop of the Network for the Study of Environmental History of Turkey (NEHT) took place place at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara on 6-7 September 2019. The second workshop (the first one was in Hamburg in 2017) was another important step towards the development of environmental history as a field in Ottoman and Turkish studies.
Here are some highlights from the meeting:
It was the first academic gathering ever in Turkey to focus on Ottoman/Turkish environmental history
Begüm Özkaynak (Boğaziçi University) delivered the keynote
The workshop brought together 36 presenting participants from 8 countries.
Two book launch events were held at the workshop
The venue for the next workshop was announced: The 3rd NEHT workshop will take place in Vienna, Austria in 2021
10th ESEH Conference in Tallinn: Highlights
10th biennial conference of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) took place in Tallinn, Estonia. Here are some highlights:
Ottoman/Turkish environmental history has been well represented at ESEH 2019. There were 10 participants, 2 panels and 4 individual papers on the Ottoman Empire/Turkey
Kate Brown (MIT), the author of Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future delivered an impressing keynote on the continuing impacts of Chernobyl
New board was elected on the 2nd day of the conference. Marco Armiero (KTH, Sweden) became the new president of ESEH. Good news for Turkey: Onur İnal became a board member
Northern Macedonia has been approved as a new ESEH region on the 2nd day of the conference. Aleksandar Shopov became the first regional representative for Northern Macedonia
The venue for the next conference was announced on the 2nd day of the conference: The 11th ESEH conference will take in Bristol, UK in 2021
Seeds of Power: Explorations in Ottoman Environmental History, the volume Onur İnal and Yavuz Köse edited, was launched on the 3rd day of the conference
Macarlı Abdullah Bey of Vienna and the Natural History Museum in Istanbul
an Interview with Semih Çelik
An interview with our colleague Semih Çelik (Koç University Research Center on Anatolian Civilizations), who spent one month in Vienna as "Andreas Tietze Fellow" for his project "A Veritable Child of Vienna – despite the Turkish name’: Macarlı Abdullah Bey of Vienna and the Natural History Museum in Istanbul (1849-1874)"
Call for Submissions:
Special Issue of Diyâr on
“Human-Animal Encounters in the Middle East”
Deadline for abstracts: 31 December 2019
Diyâr – Journal of Turkish, Ottoman, and Middle Eastern Studies will publish a special issue on human-animal relations in the Middle East from the past to the present day. For its themed journal issue, the journal invites submissions that consider the interplay between human and non-human animals. Contributions from across disciplines such as (but not limited to) political science, history, sociology, anthropology, literary studies, religious studies, art history, psychology, ecology, bioscience/biomedical research, biology are welcomed.
The special issue on human-animal encounters in the Middle East is to be published in Spring 2021. The deadline for abstracts is 31 December 2019. More information can be found in this CfP.
Toplumsal Tarih (Journal of Social History) has published dossiers that might be interesting for environmental historians. The dossier on animals (İnsanın Kadim Dostu: Hayvanlar) in the October 2019 issue (Issue no. 310) focuses on the encounters between humans and non-human animals throughout the history. The dossier in the November 2019 issue (Issue no. 311) includes articles on the foundation and development of natural history museums in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey (Tasniften Teşhire: Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e Doğa Tarihi Müzeleri).
EGYLandscape, a new project that aims to explore the historical landscapes of Egypt throughout the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, has been launched a short while ago.
Isacar Bolaños took up the position as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of History at Loyola University Maryland / USA.
Semih Çelik has been granted the Andreas Tietze Memorial Fellowship that is established by the University of Vienna's Near Eastern Studies Department. For his project, "A Veritable Child of Vienna – despite the Turkish name’: Macarlı Abdullah Bey of Vienna and the Natural History Museum in Istanbul (1849-1874)", Semih visited the archives of the Natural History Museum Vienna.
Aleksandar Shopov has joined as a postdoctoral fellow the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Aleksandar will be in Berlin until August 2020 for his project titled "From Hispaniola to Istanbul: Plants, Trade, and Knowledge Between the Americas and the Early Modern Ottoman World".
Sam White has been admitted as a fellow of the “Science Meets Humanities” Programme at the IMéRA, the Institute for Advanced Study of Aix-Marseille University. Sam will spend the first half of 2020 in Marseille for his project "Climate Reconstruction and Impacts from the Archives of Societies"
Faisal Husain has been admitted as a residential fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (Indiana/USA). Faisal will work on his book project, Water and Power in the Ottoman Tigris-Euphrates Basin.
Onur İnal joined the editorial board of Environment and History, an international refereed journal published by the White Horse press
OTTOMAN/TURKISH ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY SOURCES
There is a new section on our webpage where new sources in the field are listed.
Contact us at info@envhistturkey.com if you have a new publication.
