Teaching

Teaching Environmental History at ANU

Australia’s leading graduate program in Environmental History

ANU has been attracting doctoral students to work in this field for many years. Doctoral graduates in Environmental History from ANU now work in universities, museums, archives, heritage agencies, conservation departments and as ARC research fellows, and maintain close links with CEH.

Dr Rani Kerin, a doctoral graduate of the School of History, RSSS, recalls her time as a student here…

A biennial National Environmental History PhD Workshop

This has been running since 2002 and the fifth workshop will be held on 25-29 October 2010. It brings 16-20 doctoral students from around Australia and New Zealand for an intensive one-week teaching workshop on environmental history.

Australian and New Zealand Environmental History Network

The graduates of the PhD Workshops (above) created the basis for the Australian and New Zealand Environmental History Network (EHN) centred at ANU (http://fennerschool-associated.anu.edu.au/environhist/). EHN was a partner in the First World Congress on Environmental History, which was held in Denmark in 2009.

NMA Student Prize in Australian Environmental History and the History of Australian Science

This prize, which is administered by the Australian Academy of Science and supported by the NMA, offers a biennial award of $2500 for the best essay in environmental history or the history of Australian science by a research student. First awarded in 2006, the 2011 winning essay was, ‘A brief history of the monsoon’, penned by Christian O’Brien, a PhD student at the Australian National University’s School of History. Second prize went to Sonya Duus, a PhD student at ANU’s Fenner School of Environment and Society, for her essay ‘Buried sunshine, sacrificial lands and industrial slaves: an environmental history of coal in Australia’.

Undergraduate course in environmental history

Environmental History: Australia and the World

Course co-ordinator: Dr Greg Barton

Teachers: Greg Barton, Tom Griffiths and Nicholas Brown

This seminar investigates a relatively new and exciting genre of historical scholarship: the development and history of global environmentalism, with a particular focus on Australia. The course is team taught, and the themes investigated coincide with the research specialty of the teacher. The three major components of the course offer different but complementary views of environmental history – Tom Griffiths introduces deep-time and ecological perspectives, Greg Barton explores imperial visions and a history of environmental ideas, and Nick Brown focuses on the social and political context of debates over the environment in post-war Australia.