This day school will look at how people down the centuries have understood and coped with crises caused by climatic events or climate change, using evidence from landscape archaeology, early printed texts, and economic and oral history.
Our first speaker, archaeologist Dr Daniel Lawrence from the University of Durham, will discuss what we can learn about climate crisis and adaption from the landscape archaeology of ancient Mesopotamia and the fertile crescent of the Middle East.
Our second speaker, historian Dr Sara Barker from the University of Leeds, will look at how natural disasters were reported in the newly-invented news media of the 16th and 17th centuries, at a time when tempests, earthquakes and floods were often seen as signs of God’s providential intervention.
Our third speaker, economic historian Professor Richard Hoyle from the University of Reading, will discuss the 1790s, crisis years in British history, when a series of poor harvests, population increase, industrialisation, the French Revolution and war with France generated social unrest as food production and imports struggled to meet the needs of the poor.
Our final speaker, Dr Stephanie Lawrence, is an Associate Professor in the College of Social Science at the University of Lincoln, who specialises in the response to and the management of disasters. Her research looks at survivors’ memories from the 1953 East Coast floods, in particular on Canvey Island, considering how the floods became part of the fabric of the community and at how official memories often differed from lived experience.
Understanding how communities coped with past environmental crises, it is hoped, will provide plenty of food for reflection as we cope with man-man climate crisis in the 21st century.
Please note: this event will close to enrolments at 23:59 BST on 28 May 2025.