Research

Antarctic history and policy

An environmental and political history of Australia’s involvement in the Antarctic Treaty System.

Read more about Antarctic history and policy.

After Agriculture

A research project on the history of agricultural science for inland Australia.

Archaeology of Australia’s Deserts and Drylands

This project reviews and synthesizes the deep history of Australia’s deserts, charting the development of distinctive Aboriginal societies over 30 millennia.

Australian Environmental Historiography

The Centre for Environmental History encourages scholarship and debate about the distinctive character of Australian environmental historiography.

Associations Make Identities: Heritage Preservation and Colonial Identity

This project explores the nexus between colonisation and the politics of history, by examining the construction and negotiation of colonial identity through settler interest in New Zealand in heritage preservation and historic landscapes of both Māori and European origin.

Read more about Associations Make Identities

The Changing Science and Ecology of Forests in Australia, India, and South Africa 1850-1950

This project investigates how imperial institutions and networks across the Indian Ocean region from the mid nineteenth until the mid twentieth centuries facilitated the spread of flora and the creation and diffusion of local forms of scientific knowledge relating to trees.

Read more about Changing Science and Ecology of Forests.

Climate and Colonization in Australasia

‘Climate and Colonization’ in Australasia offers important new historical understandings of human responses to climate and climate change by exploring the dynamic relationship between settlement, climate and colonization.

Read more about Climate and Colonization in Australasia.

Climate and Culture in Australia

Current research includes a study of Australian environmental history and prophecy in the twentieth century, and reflections on the contributions of humanities scholarship to climate studies.

Read more about Climate and Culture in Australia.

The Culture of Weeds

A multi-disciplinary team are investigating invasion biology, identity and aesthetics in Australia.

Desert Channels: The Impulse to Conserve

This project combines a book, art exhibitions and web-based materials in an exploration of the understandings of the distinctive Desert Channels country of south-western Queensland.

Expedition to Arnhem Land in 1948: Intercultural Inquiry in a Trans-National context

This research project investigates the genealogy, preparations, activities and legacies of the event known as the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land (AASEAL).

Read more about Expedition to Arnhem Land in 1948.

Expertise for the future

The focus of the Expertise for the Future project is the development of environmental prediction, and the reception of predictions optimistic and pessimistic since the sixteenth century.

Read more about Expertise for the Future.

Global Climate Theory and Desiccation

Centre for Environmental History Research Fellow, Dr Gregory Barton, has launched a research project into the longer cultural history of climate perceptions and policy.

Read more about Global Climate Theory and Desiccation.

IHOPE Project

The Centre for Environmental History is contributing to the international IHOPE Project (Integrated History and Future of People on Earth).

‘Keeping places’: historic preservation and the politics of history-making in Australia

This project explores the use of historical narrative in the cultural politics of history-making in Australia through the lenses of historic preservation and interest in the historical landscape.

Networks of Nature in the British Empire

The project presents new perspectives on imperial environmental history exchanges, natural resource use, and the role of non-Europeans in environmental change in the British Empire in the nineteenth century. It will be published by Continuum Bloomsbury in 2014.

New Zealand and China connections and exchanges

A set of projects that examine environmental and intellectual connections between New Zealand and China.

Slow Catastrophes: drought resilience amongst farmers and agricultural communities in Australia, 1880s-2000s

‘Slow Catastrophes’ explores the history of people’s resilience to drought in Australia. Drought is a profound shaper of Australian rural society and its recurrence has meant that rural communities have, over time, found ways to respond, adapt and survive. This is a historical study exploring social issues which have contributed to surviving drought in rural Australia between the 1880s-2000s.

Read more about ‘Slow Catastrophes’.

The Victorian Bushfire Research Project

A collaboration between the Centre for Environmental History and the residents of Steels Creek, Victoria, this project seeks to address the gap in the understanding of the social, cultural and ecological dimensions of fire experience.

Read about the Victorian Bushfire Research Project.