School of History

Personal Details

Research Interests

Supervision

Teaching

Publications

Conferences

My research focuses on British environmental history post-1800, with a particular emphasis on species history, landscape history, the history of nature conservation, the history of environmental groups, and changing human attitudes to Nature. From 1998-2000 I held a Leverhulme Special Research Fellowship looking at the environmental history of the grey seal in Britain. Other work has investigated the environmental history of the Scottish Highlands, forest and woodland history, and the history of tourism and outdoor recreation in Britain. I also have historical, geographical and ecological research interests in the powerful and complex Tourism and Environment relationship.

Current research is being done in conjunction with the RSPB, looking at the development and management of osprey tourism in the UK, from its origins in Scotland in the late 1950s. Another project, funded by the Water Initiative Fund, is focused on the multi-purpose use of a water body, and looks at the history of nature conservation and recreation at Rutland Water here in the East Midlands. In January 2005, I voyaged to Antarctica to compile a commissioned research report for IAATO on the current operations and sustainable practices of an Argentinean tour operator. 

During 2006, I held the prestigious Alexander Fellowship for Modern History at the University of Western Australia, and during my tenure delivered a series of research-based Public Lectures and a postgraduate Masterclass across the state of Western Australia.

From 1999-2000 I served as the first President of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH), and as Vice-President from 2000-2001.

I sit on the Editorial Collective of 5 that produces the international journal Environment and History.

Alongside formal university commitments, I am a Script and Programme Consultant to the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol; a Rank Foundation Leadership Fellow; an Observer for the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO); and here in the East Midlands I sat on the Steering Committee of the National Forest Company’s ‘LANDshapes: Heritage in the Making’ project from 2003-2006. All of this public service feeds into my own research endeavours.

Supervision

I can supervise research students in the areas of British and global environmental history, species history, landscape and environment, the history of tourism, and public history and heritage.

Teaching

The Environment (historical, geographical and ecological) is at the centre of all of my teaching. As well as delivering lectures on global environmental history to first year and second year undergraduate history survey courses, I run a second year option ‘Environmental History: Nature and the Western World, 1800-2000’ which focuses on the past and present relationships between Nature and People in the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand. I supervise history undergraduate ‘Exploring Historiography’ and third year Dissertations in the field of environmental history. At Masters level I teach a core module ‘Past and Present Environments: key texts, thinkers and issues’, which investigates changing attitudes to Nature over time and place.

I am Course Director of the postgraduate MA in Environmental History, a dynamic and unique teaching and research venture established by the School of History and the School of Geography. 

In the Business School, I teach a large cross-Faculty undergraduate module ‘Managing Tourism and the Environment: conflict or consensus?’, and a postgraduate option ‘Tourism and Sustainability’ as part of the MSc. in Tourism Management and Marketing.

Journal articles

‘Therapy of the green leaf: public responses to the provision of forest and woodland recreation in twentieth century Britain’, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, forthcoming 2007. ISSN 0966-9582

Trees and People: tracing the early provision of forest and woodland recreation in twentieth century Britain. Christel DeHaan Tourism and Travel Research Institute (TTRI) Discussion Paper, No.3, 2005, pp 1-31. ISSN 1471-1427

with numerous authors, ‘Environmental History in Europe from 1994 to 2004: enthusiasm and consolidation’, Environment and History, 10th Anniversary Issue, Volume 10, No.4, November 2004, pp 501-530.  ISSN 0967-3407

Essays in edited collections

‘Leisure and Recreation’, in Anthony Cooke, Ian Donnachie, Ann Macsween and Christopher A. Whatley (eds) Modern Scottish History 1707 to the Present, Volume 2: The Modernisation of Scotland, 1850 to the Present (Tuckwell Press for The Open University and the University of Dundee, East Linton, 1998) Chapter 25, pp 257-276. Revised and updated for second edition, 2003. ISBN 1-86232-073-X

Other publications

‘IAATO Observer Report for vessel MV Ushuaia and tour company ANTARPPLY S.A’, submitted to the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO), USA, February 2005, 15pp. 

'Predatory Bird Control and Fishery Protection in Cornwall and on the Isles of Scilly in the first half of the twentieth century', Isles of Scilly Natural History Review 2001, pp 154-157.

Book Reviews

on TC Smout, Alan MacDonald and Fiona Watson (2005) A History of the Native Woodlands of Scotland, 1500-1920 in Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, forthcoming 2007.

on George Seddon (2005) The Old Country: Australian Landscapes, Plants and People in Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 17, No.2, 2006, pp 293-295.

on Knowers Ark Global Education Project (2005) Earth: a graphic look at the state of the world in Environment and History, Volume 12, No.3, pp 352-353.

on Trevor Kerry (2005) Of Roseates and Rectories: the birding biography of the Revd Francis Linley Blathwayt in East Midlands Historian, forthcoming 2006.

on Alstrom, Mild and Zetterstrom (2003) Pipits and Wagtails of Europe, Asia and North America in Biologist, Volume 51, No.1, Spring 2004, p. 59.

on Libby Robin (2001) The Flight of the Emu: a hundred years of Australian ornithology, 1901-2001 in Environment and History, Volume 10, No. 1, February 2004, pp 107-110.

on F. Burkhardt et al eds (1999) The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Volume 11, 1863 in Biologist, Volume 48, No.2, April 2001, p 93.

Conferences

‘The Osprey in Britain, 1880-2007: from persecution to sustainable tourism icon’, Australasian Ornithological Conference, Perth, Western Australia, December 2007.

‘Nature and People: conflict and consensus in rural Britain, 1800-2000’, The SKYWEST Airlines Annual Sustainability Lecture, Albany, Australia, 22 January 2007.

‘Animals and Society: culling, conservation, commemoration and commercialization’, cross-university Public Lecture, Murdoch University, Australia, 26 September 2006.

‘Contested Nature in the British Countryside: from the nineteenth century to the present day’, The Alexander Public Lecture, University of Western Australia, 12 September 2006.

‘Engaging with Nature and Understanding the Environment’, PhD Masterclass, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Western Australia, 29 August 2006.

Colloquium Presentation on Karen Jones’s book, Wolf Mountains: A history of wolves along the Great Divide (2002), Department of History Research Seminars, University of Essex, May 2004.

‘The therapy of the green leaf: the development of woodland recreation in the twentieth century’, International Conference FC/BES/SYBRG/English Nature/Landscape Conservation Forum: The Ecology, Archaeology and Management of Ancient Woods and Associated Lands, Sheffield Hallam University, May 2003.

‘Teaching Environmental History in Britain’, European Association for Environmental History conference, The Open University, Milton Keynes, May 2003.

‘The Grey Seal Problem in Britain: Using history to illuminate the roots of a current nature conservation conflict’, 1st international conference of the European Society for Environmental History, University of St. Andrews, September 2001.

‘Grey Seals in Trust: Coping with a marine nature conservation success, 1900-2000’, 70th Anglo-American Conference of Historians, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, July 2001.

‘Environmental History- Themes, Characteristics and Traditions: the view from Scotland’, AGM and Annual Dinner Lecture of the Abertay Historical Society, University of Dundee, May 2000.

‘Founding the European Society for Environmental History’, European Association for Environmental History conference, University of East Anglia, Norwich, May 2000.

‘Coping with Grey Seals and Other Conservation Successes’, Centre for Environmental History and Policy Seminar Series, Universities of Stirling and St Andrews, March 2000.

‘A Century of Biological Survey work in Britain, and celebrating the role of the amateur’, Close of morning session at conference: Into the Millenium, Bird Trends into the Next Century, BTO/RSPB Manchester Region Conference, Rivington, November 1999.

‘The Past, Present and Future of British Environmental History: Strengths and Weaknesses’, at Round Table Discussion: The Future of European Environmental History, Munich, April 1999.

‘The value of Historic Landscape Photographs: the link between history, geography and future policy’, Seminar: Digital Resources for Scholarship in the Arts and Humanities, St. Andrews, Feb 1999.

‘Archivists and Archives: how historians and geographers see you’, AGM Society of Archivists -Scottish Region Conference: Archives and Archivists - Promotion and Access, St.Andrews, March 1997.

Exhibitions

‘Historic Landscape Photographs of Rothiemurchus’. Done in conjunction with the University of Dundee Archives Department, as part of the two day conference, Nature And People On A Highland Estate: 1500-2000. Edinburgh and Rothiemurchus Estate, 1997.

‘The Usefulness of Historic Landscape Photographs’. As part of the exhibition stands for the University of Dundee and the University of St. Andrews Photographic Collections at the Scottish Nature Photography Fair, SNH Battleby, 1996.

Full pre-2001 publication list

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