Research project
Ecology, interdisciplinarity, and the uses of landscape history in Britain’s twentieth century
- Start date: 1 September 2025
- End date: 31 August 2028
- Funder: British Academy
- Primary investigator: xmwb1685
Value
£378,913.46
Description
Arguments about the impact of humans on the natural world often involve arguments about the past: about
how the world would have looked, or did look, before humans came along. This research project investigates
why ecological history came to be so important in debates about the environment in twentieth-century Britain.
It does so by tracking the fate of an influential genre of scholarly and popular writing – ‘landscape history’ –
that sprang up across the science-humanities divide and which exerted an important influence on debates
about environmental conservation. Surprisingly, historians have paid the genre little attention. This project,
however, will show that studying it can: (i) further our understanding of environmental politics by revealing the
varied ideological and political uses to which knowledge about the ecological past was put; and (ii) shed light
on the development, dynamics, and limits of interdisciplinary collaboration between the humanities and
sciences.