Hosted by the Department of Economic History, LSE

Organising Committee: Eilidh Garrett (Edinburgh), Nicola Shelton (UCL) and Wendy Sigle (LSE), Neil Cummins (LSE), and Eric Schneider (LSE) 

Date: 17 and 18 April 2023, LSE and online

Researchers and students studying historical demography come from a wide range of disciplines including anthropology, demography, economic history, economics, epidemiology, family history, geography, medical history, population data science, and social history. This variety of disciplines makes the field vibrant, but it also means that students learn about key historical demographic phenomena mostly from a particular disciplinary background. 

To promote greater understanding and collaboration across disciplines, we are organising a two-day workshop on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Research and Teaching in Historical Demography, supported by the Economic History Society, British Society for Population Studies, LSE Economic History Department and LSE Eden Centre, to be held at LSE on 17 and 18 April 2023. While the speakers at the workshop will be present in London, we will also welcome online engagement via Zoom, and the room has good hybrid capabilities. The sessions will be recorded and shared afterwards. 

The workshop will consist of a blend of research and teaching-focussed sessions throughout both days. In the research sessions, leading historical demographers from different disciplinary backgrounds will present their ongoing work to highlight the diversity of approaches to historical demography research. The teaching sessions will take a panel format with the purpose of 1) identifying the differences in the way each discipline approaches the teaching of and research in historical demography and 2) beginning to build a consensus on key concepts, methods and approaches that students of historical demography should be taught regardless of their discipline. 

Please register to attend the workshop using the following link: https://forms.gle/6wnK6ia6YM6ywi3a8. In-person attendance is limited because of space constraints. Please register for in-person attendance by 27 March 2023.

From spillover diseases to re-emerging infections to rising rates of antimicrobial resistance, stories of unruly microbes have proliferated daily conversation in recent years.

These serious and continuing threats to human and nonhuman health fly in the face of triumphalist narratives of epidemiological transition and global disease eradication (Bellamy Foster et al., 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the extent to which these human-microbial interactions are mediated by ecological change widely construed, from urban and rural land use change driven by global commerce patterns to shifts in internal microbial populations within bodies. While scholars have developed many frames through which to think about the embeddedness of disease in ecological change historically and in the present, these stories remain on the margins of more traditional biomedical studies, and are often siloed into different disciplinary homes. This conference seeks to bring together scholars across disciplines to think through the relationship of epidemics to human-driven environmental change across time and space. Paper and panel proposals are welcome from researchers working on topics widely related to this theme. Examples of possible intersecting themes include:

·      Capitalism, land use change, and infectious disease

·      Colonialism, ecological change, and infectious disease

·      Urban ecology and sanitation

·      Zoonoses and multispecies studies of disease

·      Agricultural systems and human-animal diseases

·      Hospitals-as-ecologies and histories of infection control

·      Histories of epidemic and infection control programs

·      Changing conceptions of human-microbial relationships (the Holobiont, Pathobiont, mutualisms)

Abstracts of between 300-500 words on the themes above and related topics are welcome. We are happy to consider co-authored submissions and panel proposals, especially those that include scholars working from multiple disciplines. 

Please direct abstracts and any questions to Dr Emily Webster  by the 24th of March, 2023.

Ulster University has an upcoming symposium entitled Food Poverty across Ireland: Past, Current and Future Perspectives. 

The symposium will be hosted by the School of Medicine, School of History and School of Sport on 5 May 2023 at MU201, Magee Campus, Ulster University. 

Food Poverty across Ireland will address the current post-COVID context of food poverty, soaring grocery bills and rising reliance on charitable and state assistance, while also investigating the historically-rooted nature of food problems in Ireland, a country which has historically suffered worse nutrition and dietary health levels than other western countries.

This symposium will engage with the theme through the lens of humanities, history, culture, social justice and sociology. By interweaving these into clinical- and science-based approaches, broader perspectives will be developed to help better understand and form responses to policies and problems, consider rights-based approaches to food, while also promoting empathetic attitudes towards how families budget, make food choices and prioritise overlapping issues such as health, cost and survival. The location will increase potential to engage medics so that they gain a historical/cultural awareness of food poverty.

To take part please submit a 200 word abstract and brief CV by 30 March 2023 to either i.miller@ulster.ac.uk or foodpovertysymposium2023@gmail.com