Workshop Climate & conflict revisited. Perspectives from the past and the present

Theme:

The link between climate change and conflict has become a major topic of public debate. Fears of climate-driven conflict frame security concerns and fuel dystopian media depictions. These debates have been informed – often implicitly – by historical precedents. However, research in the field has been limited by disciplinary constraints. This workshop will bring together fields of climate history and conflict studies. Its goal is to establish an improved historical ‘baseline’ for current claims and projections, to challenge determinist imaginaries, and to broaden the current debate about climate and conflict – both modern and historical.

Program:

Thursday, May 11th 2023

9.00-9.15 Introduction and welcome

9.15-10.45 Historical perspectives I

• Barry Molloy (Dublin), 1200 BC – a critical nexus of shifts in climate and conflict patterns coinciding with large-scale societal collapse
• Astrid Ogilvie (Colorado), Climate and Conflict in Iceland ca. AD 1100 to 1430
• Georgios C. Liakopoulos / Adam Izdebski (Jena), The role of conflict in maintaining resilience to environmental stressors in late medieval and early modern Central Macedonia

11.15-12.00 Historical perspectives II

• Christian Pfister (Bern), Reflections on the nexus between climate, weather and resource conflicts using case studies in Europe from the 15th and 16th centuries

13.00-14.30 Historical perspectives II (cont'd)

• Diyang Zhang / Siyu Chen (Freiburg / Bern), Impacts of natural disasters in China in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911): From the food prices to population security
• Lukáš Dolák (Brno), An effect of climate fluctuation on the 1775 and 1821 rebellions in the Czech Lands
• Rudolf Brázdil / Katrin Kleemann (Brno, Bremerhaven), Weather and climate and their human impacts and responses during the Thirty Years’ War in Central Europe15.00-16.00 

15.00-16.00 Contemporary perspectives I

• Stefan Döring (Uppsala / Oslo), Climate-Conflict impact on cooperation and health
• Natália Nascimento e Melo (Évora), Museums as climate mediators in the 21st century

16.30-17.30 Visit to Klimahuset

18.00-19.00 Public talk at Klimahuset

• Florian Krampe (SIPRI, Stockholm), Demystifying Climate Security – It’s complex, but not complicated

Friday, May 12th 2023

9.00-10.30 New databases on climate and conflict (hybrid)

• Pi-Ling Pai / Kuan-Hui Elaine Lin (Taipei), The construction of the SIER database for exploring the relationship between climate change and social unrest
• Santiago Gorostiza / Mariano Barriendos (Barcelona), Revisiting the connection between climatic variability and witch-hunting. The case of Catalonia (1580-1630)
• Nicolas Maughan / Qing Pei (Aix-Marseille / Hong Kong), Climate Change and Historical Social Conflicts in pre-Industrial Europe: First results from the new HiSCoD database

10.45-11.45 Contemporary perspectives II

• Cedric de Coning (Oslo), Coping with Complexity: Toward Epistemological Pluralism in Climate–Conflict Scholarship
• Silviya Serafimova (Sofia), Challenging the gist of climate violence through the lens of positive peace

12.00-13.00 Closing roundtable and discussion

• Find the full programm here.
• The call for papers for this workshop can be found here.

Registration:

• The event will be streamed via Zoom. If you want to join online or visit the evening lecture at Klimahuset please register here. Deadline for registration May 10th 14:00: https://nettskjema.no/a/334363
• There are some limited spaces for physical participation in the workshop. If interested please contact: Dominik.Collet@iakh.uio.no

Organisers:

• Dominik Collet, CLIMCULT (Socionatural entanglements of climate and culture in Little Ice Age Norway)

• Sam White, CRIAS (Climate Reconstruction and Impacts from the Archives of Societies)
• The event has been supported by the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities