Interdisciplinary Working and Environmental History

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Northumbria University uses a beautifully simple hashtag, ‘#TakeonTomorrow’,to tell the world that its researchers are ready to solve its urgent problems,including environmental challenges. An environmental historian’s ability toarticulate and explain clearly the detailed discontinuities in communities’ nu-anced experiences of and relationships with any given environment, non-humanspecies or natural system is a valuable skill. However, if and when those skillsare combined with the equally useful and valuable skills of disciplines beyondhistory, for example those of a civil engineer, an architect, a geographer anda social scientist, as part of an impactful multidisciplinary taskforce chargedwith solving a particular stakeholder problem, the whole becomes greater thanthe sum of its parts. Increasingly, universities are facilitating and encouragingthe assembly of multi-disciplinary teams comprising expertise from variousdisciplines to contribute to resolving problems in a wide range of organisa-tions. Environmental historians can engage fruitfully and logically with mostdisciplines. Over decades, interdisciplinary ways of working have been wovenpurposely into our practice and methodologies. As a sub-discipline, we havebecome highly skilled at befriending academics who sit in other departments,faculties and continents. Often, the allies of environmental history projectswrite in styles markedly different from our own and sometimes they are drivenby unfamiliar goals, but nevertheless they are researching the environmentsunder our study. This article will argue that, when exploring interdisciplinaryways of working, it is helpful to give the environment itself primacy as thehub, or the common denominator, in these teams or taskforces.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)695-706
Number of pages12
JournalEnvironment and History
Volume30
Issue number4
Early online date24 Sept 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2024

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