Environmental History

Environmental history is a major area of expansion for the GHCC. In 2023, Tom Simpson joined Warwick as the university’s first formally designated environmental historian. His research on the environmental knowledge systems of modern imperialism builds on established GHCC interests in global histories of science and technology, and the interrelation of empire and environmental change. Now, a burgeoning cohort of doctoral students and academics in and beyond the History Department are working on projects that bring into dialogue key themes of environmental history and global history.

In June 2026, Simpson and James Poskett will co-convene an international conference on ‘Historicising the Nonhuman’, which will explore the globe-spanning concepts and practices through which nonhuman beings have been understood and manipulated. Warwick’s PhD students, including those on the Wheeler History of Travel Writing Programme, are currently undertaking pioneering work on how environmental objects—animals, plants, microbes, earthy matter—are not only set in motion themselves, but also shape human experiences and perceptions of mobility.

Emerging areas of priority for environmental history within the GHCC include exploring how global history relates to planetary history and to current environmental crises. On this theme, Simpson and Giorgio Riello co-convene the ‘Planetary Histories’ seminar series at the Institute for Historical Research in London, and Simpson is associate editor of the new journal Anthropocene History (Duke University Press). In addition, the GHCC is a key supporter of Warwick’s Map History Research Group, convened by Liz Chant (Global Sustainable Development) and Simpson, a key focus of which is the role of cartography and visualisation in the production and communication of environmental knowledges.