Category: Seminar

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Seminar

Exploring the History of Meteorology, Race, and Empire

Below is a recording from an online panel featuring several ICHM Officers and members, titled

Observing History: Panel Discussion on Current Work on the History of Meteorology, Race, and Empire

If you are having trouble accessing the embedded version above, the full video can also be found here.

This recording is from a session that took place on 17th October at the UK Met Office’s annual OpMet Conference 2024, which was organised by the Met Office’s EM-Power network, it’s Minority Ethnic Network as part of its Black History Month 2024 campaign. The session features contributions from Dr Fiona Williamson (Singapore Management University and Co-President, ICHM), Dr Tom Simpson (University of Warwick) and Dr Roger Turner (Science History Institute, Philadelphia).

The EM-Power network is led by Rohan Jain and Eleanor Wong, both Senior Operational Meteorologists at RAF Odiham/JOMOC Northwood and Heathrow Airport respectively. This session forms part of an ongoing conversation between the EM-Power network and the ICHM on how histories of meteorology can inform efforts to transform practice in the present.

Categories
Online Seminar

Webinar: Sharing Scientists Stories

A Conversation with Meteorologist Biographers

We would like to draw members attention to this upcoming webinar organized by colleagues at the American Meteorological Society. Taking place via Zoom on Thursday 17th October 2024 at 19:00 ET (16:00 PT), the webinar will feature Jonathan E. Martin, Sean Potter, and Jim Fleming. More information and the registration link follows.

Continue reading “Webinar: Sharing Scientists Stories”
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Online Seminar

Governing Climate in the U.S.: An Historical Sociology

By Dr Zeke Baker, online, 24 April 2023, 08:00 PDT (UTC-7)

ICHM Annual Seminar Series

Join us for the next seminar in our 2022-23 series, when the environmental sociologist, Dr Zeke Baker (Sonoma State University) will be speaking about his research on the history of climate governance in the US.

Register to attend the online seminar here: https://bit.ly/3YyCQTz

To receive information about the rest of the 2022/23 seminar series, and other ICHM activities, sign-up to our mailing list: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/meteohistory

Continue reading “Governing Climate in the U.S.: An Historical Sociology”
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Online Seminar

Letters to the Editor: Reporting Disasters in Late Nineteenth Century Philippines

By Prof. Greg Bankoff, online, 21 Feb 2023, 10:00 UTC/GMT

ICHM Annual Seminar Series

Join us for our first seminar of 2023 with historical geographer, Professor Greg Bankoff (Ateneo de Manila University) who will be speaking about his research on newspaper reporting of disasters in the Philippines in the nineteenth century.

Register to attend the online seminar here: https://bit.ly/3QjKgqe

To receive information about the rest of the 2022/23 seminar series, and the other ICHM activities, sign-up to our mailing list: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/meteohistory

Continue reading “Letters to the Editor: Reporting Disasters in Late Nineteenth Century Philippines”
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Online Seminar

Textualizing Typhoons: Historical Vignettes on Philippine Typhoons, 1600s-2000s

By Dr Kerby Alvarez, online, 7 December 2022, 18:00 PHST (UTC+8)

ICHM Annual Seminar Series

Join us for the second of our new online seminar series on 7th December when the historian of science Dr Kerby Alvarez (University of the Philippines Diliman) will be speaking about his research on the history of typhoons in the Philippines.

Register to attend the online seminar here:

https://bit.ly/3AkbXZn

To receive information about the rest of the 2022/23 seminar series, and the rest of ICHM’s activities, sign-up to our mailing list: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/meteohistory

Abstract

This seminar will discuss and examine textualizations of typhoons in Philippine history from the 1600s to the 2000s. The textualization comes in two forms: (1) typhoons and typhoon events and experiences as “historical texts” that illustrate the perceptions and understanding of Filipino communities in a given historical milieu; and (2) typhoons as object/subject of scientific investigations and policy reforms in disaster responses. The first deals with typhoons serving as vignettes of culture and historicity, and the second deals with scientific and historical knowledge production schemes in the aftermath of disastrous typhoon experiences.

Biography

Dr. Kerby C. Alvarez is an Associate Professor at the Department of History, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman. His research interests include environmental history, history of science, history of hazards and disasters in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, Philippine nationalism, and the local history of his hometown, Malabon. His publications include “Instrumentation and Institutionalization: Colonial Science and the Observatorio Meteorologico de Manila, 1865-1899.” (Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, 2016), “The June 1863 and the July 1880 Earthquakes in Luzon, Philippines: Interpretations and Disasters.” (Illes I Imperis, 2020), and “Patriotic Masculinity: Nationalism and Masculinity in Select Philippine Historical Films.” (Southeast Asian Media Studies Journal, 2021).

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Notes & Letters Seminar

14.7: Inquiry into Earth Atmospheres

Logo for the 14:7 initiative. A postcard of cumulo-stratus clouds, colour manipulated and flipped to portrait, with text overlaid

By Emery Jenson, University of Wisconsin-Madison

We’re excited to announce the launch of “14.7: Inquiry into Earth Atmospheres,” a new Borghesi-Mellon Public Humanities Workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Our workshop provides a forum for scientists, social scientists, and humanists to develop new methods, terms, and analytical frames for inquiry into Earth’s atmosphere(s).

As a collective, we hope to deepen our investigation of Earth atmospheres to shed light on problems that no one of our disciplines can engage alone. We will investigate the practices by which corporate energy giants like Enron use climate data to commodify atmosphere and weather patterns. We will bring together insights of postcolonial and area studies with those of meteorology. We will engage meteorological research showing that basic atmospheric mechanisms like heating and cooling occur via different dynamics in the tropics and the poles. We will explore multiple intersecting planetary atmospheres that challenge what Kristen Simmons has called “settler atmospherics,” a monologic account of atmosphere manifest as monoculturalism. We hope you will join us.

Continue reading “14.7: Inquiry into Earth Atmospheres”
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Online Seminar

Meteorology and Cultural Change in Vietnam, 1000-1850

Comparing written and dendrochronological records of a drought episode in 1765 for northern Vietnam

By Dr Hieu Phung, online, 6 October 2022, 20:00 SGT (UTC+8)

ICHM Annual Seminar Series

Join us for the first of our new online seminar series on 6th October when the environmental historian Dr Hieu Phung (Rutgers University) will be speaking about her research on the history of meteorology in Vietnam.

Register to attend the online seminar here: https://bit.ly/3KCHzNU

To receive information about the rest of the 2022/23 seminar series, and the rest of ICHM’s activities, sign-up to our mailing list: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/meteohistory

Abstract

Between 1000 and the 1850s, meteorological knowledge and practices of the Vietnamese were strongly associated with wet rice cultivation. The authorities maintained official agencies to produce yearly calendars that traced proper timing for rice crops, while the populace accumulated experience-based knowledge about seasonal rainfall. But weather extremes and other natural anomalies were not merely natural processes. They were also “Heaven-sent” warnings of cosmological disasters that demanded for moral and political change. While crossing dendrochronological reconstruction with historical records have recently generated new understandings of the past climate patterns, a deeper level of contextualization is a must to unfold the cultural script embedded in the climate-related information from historical sources.

Biography

A photograph of the seminar speaker Dr Hieu Phung.

Dr Hieu Phung is an environmental historian who investigates the impacts of local culture and statecraft on the preindustrial environment, especially on water and climate. She has recently joined Rutgers University Department of Asian Languages and Cultures as an Assistant Professor of Global Studies-Asia. Her research focuses on the history of Vietnam and Southeast Asia during the transition from the Medieval Climate Anomaly (c. 800/950–1250/1300) to the Little Ice Age (c. 1300–1850). In pursuing environmental history, she engages with the study of space, maps, and texts that reveal the construction of premodern geographic knowledge. She is working on a book project entitled “Heavenly Drought: Natural Anomalies and State-Building in Fifteenth-Century Vietnam.” Her recent publications include “Naming the Red River – Becoming a Vietnamese River” and “Meteorology in Vietnam, Pre-1850.”

Categories
Conference Seminar

Atmospheres: a series of art-science interactions

NEXT EVENT – April 30, 2019

Our next Atmospheres presentation will be by Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde on Tuesday 30 April @ 1 PM, at the University of Manchester (Building: Coupland 3, Lecture Theatre B)

Continue reading “Atmospheres: a series of art-science interactions”
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Seminar

EHESS Seminar Series “Perception du climat: les météores”

Paris, October 2018 – June 2019

Dans la continuité du séminaire « perception du climat » de l’Ehess et avec la collaboration de Météo-France, ce séminaire pluridisciplinaire, hébergé cette année par l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, propose un éclairage sur les météores. Son titre est emprunté au roman de Jules Verne qui a pour point de départ un article de presse relatant le passage d’un bolide traversant le nord de la France le soir du 16 août 1901.

Un météore est donc un phénomène, autre qu’un nuage, que les humains peuvent observer dans l’atmosphère céleste, donc en portant leur regard vers le haut (en grec ancien metéoros : signifie « qui est en haut »). Si l’on se réfère au dictionnaire de météorologie d’Oscar Villeneuve, il convient de distinguer les météores optiques, électriques, aqueux ou solides. Les nuages ne sont pas des météores.

La séance d’introduction rappellera l’histoire du mot et de la chose (de metéoros, « qui est en haut, qui s’élève »), depuis les Météorologiques d’Aristote jusqu’à l’actuelle typologie. Les séances suivantes seront chacune consacrées à un météore particulier, abordé sous un double angle, celui des représentations (littérature, peinture, mythologie…) et celui de la science météorologique  : le brouillard, la neige, l’arc-en-ciel, l’aurore boréale, les mirages, les « météores prodigieux ».

Première séance jeudi 18 octobre :

introduction sur les météores, Martine Tabeaud (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) et Anouchka Vasak (Université de Poitiers)

Ecole Normale Supérieure, CERES, 24, rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris

salle E045, rez-de-chaussée, 15h-17h

http://environnement.ens.fr/enseignements/cours-et-seminaires/les-meteores/

Organisers:

Martin de la Soudière (Centre Edgar Morin)

Alexis Metzger (ENS, CERES)

Marie-Hélène Pépin (Météo-France)

Martine Tabeaud (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Anouchka Vasak (Université de Poitiers)