In this workshop on “Colonised Landscapes” we explore how processes of imperialism and colonisation transformed landscapes (both its physical and socio-cultural features), and how this influenced nature-society relations. These transformations can be studied in a range of different regions, and relate to numerous subjects: the disruptive and unprecedented effects of European colonization on the vegetation of the Americas in the early modern period or animal populations in Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the development of scientific forestry and conservation practices by modern states (Beinart, 1989; Neumann, 2002; Ross 2017); the enclosure of common land and the expropriation of indigenous communities under cover of productivity growth (Likaka 1997) and nature protection; the rise of green imperialism and environmentalism (Grove and Grove, 1996; Fairhead, Leach and Scoones 2012); large-resource resource extraction and exploitation; large infrastructural projects etc. Attention will also be devoted to the intellectual and cultural perception, appropriation and rejection of these changing dynamics between humans and non-humans in imperial and colonial context.
For this workshop we welcome contributions that focus on 1) different regional and local case-studies exploring the relationship between colonisation, imperialism and landscapes, 2) or contributions that focus on one specific sub-theme/ topic over a number of specific cases. The workshop will exist out of 5 sessions, which include one introductory and one concluding session, and three different sessions focussing on different sub-themes. Based on the submissions we will receive and accept for the workshop we will structure these three sessions.
For this workshop we welcome contributions that focus on 1) different regional and local case-studies exploring the relationship between colonisation, imperialism and landscapes, 2) or contributions that focus on one specific sub-theme/ topic over a number of specific cases. The workshop will exist out of 5 sessions, which include one introductory and one concluding session, and three different sessions focussing on different sub-themes. Based on the submissions we will receive and accept for the workshop we will structure these three sessions.
Esther Marijnen is a postdoctoral fellow at the conflict Research Group at UGent. Her area of expertise is environmental issues, and how nature is governed in conflict areas. Adopting a political ecology approach, she focusses on the militarisation of conservation, natural resources, public authority and dynamics of violent conflict. She mainly works in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her publications include work on the militarisation of conservation and pluralising political forests.
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Esther Beeckaert is researcher at the History department at UGent. Her research focusses on commons, forests and agriculture in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ardennes and Belgium in general. Her publications include work on regional differences in vulnerability and resilience during the 1840s potato famine in Belgium. In this seminar, Esther will share her expertise on control, improvement and epistemologies of landscapes, sustainable use and management of natural resources, conflicting relations over the use of natural resources and land expropriation and conversion.
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Rita Raleira graduated Magna Cum Laude in her Bachelor in social sciences (political science orientation) and is currently in the masters Conflict and development at the UGent. In her undergraduate research on socio-environmental struggles in the arc of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon region, which focused specifically on the position and role of indigenous communities, she had the opportunity of delving into topics that pertain to the theme of the workshop at hands, namely settler colonialism and its influence on present-day governance in Brazil, indigenous ontologies and their relation to the environment, historical landscape change in the eastern border of the Brazilian Amazon and its relation to broader political, economic, and social dynamics and environmental justice and global environmental movements.
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Violette Pouillard is a postdoctoral researcher at the history department of Ghent University, currently researching environmental dynamics, colonial control and the birth of global conservationism in Congo and Uganda during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her current project ast postdoc involves environment as object and actor of conquest and conservationism in (post)imperial Africa.
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Julie Carlier is a researcher at the Conflict and development studies department of UGent. She teaches Feminism and diversity in transnational historical perspective and Gender and globalisation. Her research includes work on globalisation, women in transnational history and more. Through her work on globalisation and feminism, she will be able to add a different view in the seminar, expanding on the subject.
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Jules de Brabander is a History major at Ghent University, specialising in maritime history in the 17th century and currently also studying EU-studies at UGent. His interests lie in the effects of colonisation on changing relations between Colonisers and colonised, both in socio-economic relations and the exploitation of natural recourses.
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