The Centre of Excellence for Anthropocene History
The Center of Excellence for Anthropocene History is a multi-disciplinary research focused center aiming to build a novel, integrated approach to the past, present and future of the cumulative anthropogenic environmental transformation of the planet, contending that modern history is an essential sense-making and navigational tool for the understanding of our contemporary world.
Building on advances in Earth System and Anthropocene science, multiple strands of work in history (of, especially, environment, climate, energy, media, science, technology, infrastructures), and the neighbouring integrative field of Environmental Humanities, the Centre will systematically work to mend the longstanding separation between Earth and human history that the Anthropocene proves to be obsolete.
Our specific aims include, first and foremost, to develop a new interdisciplinary field of research with the intention to break new ground in the humanities and the social sciences, and also to make historical research more relevant to the sciences and for contemporary challenges, and vice versa.
The Centre for Anthropocene History undertakes a novel approach to modern and contemporary history, aiming to reform historical research and develop a new understanding of ‘human-and-Earth-history’ by using the notion of the Anthropocene as both study object and mode of study. In other words, we will study the history of human-earth change known as the Anthropocene while also taking on the methodological and theoretical challenges this implies in reforming the foundations of modern historiography.
The Centre perceives the Anthropocene not just as a geochronological epoch, but as a state of the world where the human and the natural intersect so profoundly that the writing of history – part of the humanities and the social sciences – is changing towards the natural and the material. To do this, we will build on the extensive range of histories developed in our existing research environment, all of which are arguably already Anthropocene histories. By drawing them together under the official name of Anthropocene History, we are building a novel field from these independent and developing research topics in a bottom-up way, and are giving them new relevance and forms for collaboration and interaction.