Call for Papers
The Second International NEHT Workshop
Environmental Histories of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey

Middle East Technical University
Ankara, Turkey
6-7 September 2019

Since its inception meeting hosted by Hamburg University in 2017, the Network for the Study of Environmental History of Turkey (NEHT) international workshop aims to be one of the main academic platforms for junior and senior scholars working on the broadly defined environmental histories of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. The second iteration of this workshop series will take place in Ankara, taking the contemporary environmental history debates to one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the country. The conference will follow the format of the earlier conference held in Hamburg: a two-day workshop surveying new approaches to the environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey and delving into methodological and theoretical discussions while being open to a wide range of temporal and geographic coverage. Currently, two edited volumes (White Horse Press and Routledge Environmental Humanities series) are forthcoming from the contributions to the first workshop of the network.

Currently, environmental history is a small but dynamic field of research in Ottoman and Turkish studies. Particularly, the studies of historical and archival sources of the Ottoman and Republican eras enable new insights into the environmental history of the last five centuries. We also welcome research that focuses on more recent past using oral histories of socio-environmental change, life histories (ie. toxic autobiographies) and multi-method approaches benefitting from the neighboring fields of environmental humanities, STS (science and technology studies) and political ecology. The main aim of the 2nd NEHT workshop is to provide an interdisciplinary forum, and therefore, it is open to a wide range of subjects, topics, approaches, and methodologies.

The overarching theme of the 2019 workshop is Historicizing Nature: Water, Forest and Land.

For the second NEHT workshop, we invite submissions for individual paper and panel proposals (with 4 papers) engaging with, but not necessarily limited to the following:

Theories, methods, approaches, and sources
 Urban and rural environmental history
 History of commons and common-pool resources
 History of climate and climate change
 Mining, energy and environmental conflicts, past and present
 History of technology and techno-environmental systems
 Forest and water history
 Agrarian history and history of agricultural ecology
 History of resource use, consumption, waste, and dirt
 History of conservation and nature protection
 Industrial and agricultural impact on environment
 Natural disasters and political responses
 History of fisheries, marine history
 Declensionist narratives and environmental determinism
 Environmental conflicts, movements, and activism
 Human and non-human entanglements
 Environmental justice and migration
 History of medicine, health and disease
 War, armed conflict and environmental destruction

Proposals must include a title, an abstract (max 400 words), and one page CV with the name and affiliation of the presenter.

Submissions should be send to neht2019@metu.edu.tr no later than 15 March 2019. All abstracts will be reviewed by established scholars in the field within three weeks after the deadline and once accepted, full draft papers will be due 15 August 2019. More information will be available at the workshop website: neht.hist.metu.edu.tr

2019 NEHT Workshop will also feature:

 A public outreach event with environmental activists on ‘environmental histories of the present’
 Optional field visit to a historical site of environmental contestation in Ankara

Practical Details

Organization and Conference Venue:
The conference is organized by Dr. Selçuk Dursun (Middle East
Technical University, Turkey), Dr. Onur İnal (Hamburg University, Germany) and Dr. Ethemcan Turhan (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) and hosted by the Department of History of the Middle East Technical University at Ankara.

Virtual Presentations 
We will be able to accommodate some exceptional virtual presenters who may be unable to attend in person due to time constraints or other reasons to present their papers. The session will feature in our Smart Class via web conference with the capability to interact with session participants during the event.

Accommodation:
We will cover the accommodation costs for all of the participants coming from outside of Ankara. Please indicate if you need accommodation support when submitting your paper proposal.
Food and beverages: Lunch and coffee breaks will be provided free of charge. Workshop will also feature a dinner.

Travel expenses:
We are currently looking for opportunities to finance some early-career researchers' travel, depending on the availability of funds and need.

Language:
The workshop language is English. No submissions in other languages will be accepted.

Post-conference publication:
We aim to publish full academic length articles (8000-9000 words) derived from presentations in a journal special issue or as an edited volume from a prestigious academic publisher in 2020. Submission deadline for full papers will be 31 December 2019.

For additional information about the workshop and the venue, please contact the workshop organizers, neht2019@metu.edu.tr