Reflections on the field
As a historian, I’ve thought about larger issues related to environmental history and history of technology and the way we ‘do’ those disciplines. This page highlights this reflective work.
Dolly Jørgensen and Virginia Langum, “Envisioning north from a premodern perspective,” in Visions of North in Premodern Europe, ed. Dolly Jørgensen and Virginia Langum (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 1-11. This is the introduction to our volume exploring who and what was in the North according to people in the ancient, medieval,…
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In The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, ed. Ursula Heise, Jon Christensen, and Michelle Niemann, 138-143. Routledge, 2017. Abstract: Humans see distinctions between artifacts, which are constructed by human hands with human ingenuity, and nature, which we tend to think of as somehow not made by humans even if…
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I held a public talk called “Anthropocene Animals: How humans are changing the planet and its inhabitants” at the Bildmuseet in Umeå, Sweden, in September 2016. The lecture was held in conjunction with the opening of the Perpetual Uncertainty exhibit about the nuclear age. You can see it here: https://vimeo.com/187611816
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In Methodological Challenges in Nature-Culture and Environmental History Research, ed. Jocelyn Thorpe, Stephanie Rutherford, and L. Anders Sandberg, 246-257. Routledge, 2017. Abstract: In this chapter I present an experiment: five pseudo-posts about blogging. I call them pseudo-posts because unlike the true online format of a blog, clickable links and embedded…
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Finn Arne Jørgensen and Dolly Jørgensen, Technology and Culture 57(1):231-237. This exhibit review discusses the Welcome to the Anthropocene: The Earth in Our Hands exhibit at the Deutsches Museum, Munich, within the context of how history of technology should engage with the Anthropocene concept. We argue that technology is the linchpin in the Anthropocene as…
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I gave a presentation titled ‘History for a sustainable future’ for a group of parliamentary representatives and researchers in the Sällskapet Riksdagsledamöter och Forskare (RIFO) as part of a seminar on environmental humanities on 14 October 2015. My talk stressed the need to incorporate environmental history and historical research into the environmental policy process.…
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An interview with me was recorded for the Department of History at Lund University on 16 October 2014. I talk about the field of environmental history, as well as my own work. The podcast starts and ends with some Swedish commentary. The interview with me goes from 05:30 to 30:00 and…
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Environment and History 20 (2014): 479-489 Technologies in the hands of humans have turned humans into a force of nature. Environmental historians have increasingly recognised the value of history of technology to explain many environmental changes. Scholarship at the environment-technology junction, deploying ideas developed with the framework of Science and…
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in Northscapes: History, Technology & the Making of Northern Environments (University of British Columbia Press, 2013) Co-authored with Sverker Sörlin This essay, which is the introduction to the volume, first situates the “North” as a hard to define entity–something more than Arctic but not clearly defined by a line on the map. We then…
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Fortid 4 (2008): 6-9. Co-authored with Finn Arne Jørgensen. Dersom vi definerer historie som studiet av fortiden, kan vi da kalle miljøhistorie studiet av fortidens miljø? Svaret er mer komplisert enn som så, først og fremst på grunn av det noe vanskelige miljøbegrepet. Hvor går grensene mellom natur og kultur, mellom menneske…
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