Environmental History
The Program of History & Philosophy of Science within The School of Social and Environmental Enquiry is a major Australian centre for teaching and research in Ecological and Environmental History.
Associate Professor Don Garden and Professor Janet McCalman offer a range of undergraduate subjects which examine the relationship between humans and the natural environment across human history.
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These subjects include:
The ecological history of humankind focuses on the interplay, from prehistoric times to the present day, between environment, disease ecology, food supplies, population and human culture. This is the history of human beings in competition with their environment and with other organisms, an exploration of the ways in which we have shaped the diseases which have afflicted us and the way in which health and disease have shaped societies.
This is a study of the relationship between humans and the natural environment within Australia. After an examination of Aboriginal environmental impacts, the main emphasis is upon the way Europeans have thought about the land, have modified it to suit their needs, and have fought to conserve it from degradation.
- 136-035 A History of Nature
Through a series of case studies, this 'meta-history' course traces changes in Western scientific and environmental knowledge and thought about 'Nature' over the last 500 years. These changes fed into new forms of understanding in such areas as taxonomy. geography, evolutionary biology, geology, and ecology, and significantly challenged traditional religious explanations and understandings of the relationship between humans and the non-human world.
The Pacific or Oceania has been of central significance for many of the major scientific discoveries, theories and understandings which have shaped Western science, our understanding of the human relationship with the non-human world, and our understanding of human societies. This subject examines a number of those theories, events, discoveries and individual theorists.
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Postgraduate supervision is offered in a wide range of aspects of ecological and environmental history, with a particular focus on Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.