Recent news and activities

CCHRI 2025 Colloquium: The Anthropocene as Heuristic? Mobilizing for Change and the Role of the Past

7-8 April 2025. University of Birmingham/UK

In April 2025, the CCHRI, in collaboration with the Human Development Report Office of the UN, hosted the CCHRI’s annual colloquium, addressing the contemporary challenge of the value of the concept of an Anthropocene, and in particular what its heuristic value might be in addressing global environmental challenges, and whether a historical perspective contributes constructively to building such a strategy. 22 participants from as far afield as New Zealand and India joined for a lively 2-day discussion. Plans to publish the presentations are under discussion. Further information, including the program, is available on the CCHRI website. 

The 6th CCHRI Intensive Introductory Workshop: Palaeosciences and Environmental history for historians and archaeologists

13-23 January 2025. Princeton University

The CCHRI annual entry-level workshop took place as usual in January and introduced over twenty participants from the fields of history and archaeology to the palaeoecological sciences and their relevance to historical and archaeological research. The workshop was led by Alistair Morgan (Basel), Warren Eastwood and Chris Bradley (U Birmingham/UK), Sturt Manning (Cornell), Lee Mordechai (Hebrew U Jerusalem), Tim Newfield (Georgetown) and John Haldon. The schedule offered brief surveys of several key ecological sciences: stable isotope analysis and sedimentary geochemistry; speleothems, ice cores, palynology and dendrochronology; C14 dating, multi-proxy data, and more. The program was organized in collaboration with Princeton’s Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies and the High Meadows Environmental Institute.

The 5th meeting of the CCHRI-DAI-ANAMED project Socio-ecological approaches to the history and archaeology of Anatolia 

addressed the topic “Urban-rural relationships, urban centers/mega sites and economic spaces.” 4-5 March 2024. ANAMED, Istanbul

Eighteen papers were presented on a range of topics reflecting current archaeological and socio-ecological research in Turkey today. The program and paper abstracts are available on the DAI website. 

CCHRI 2024 Colloquium: Resilience and sustainability: past trajectories, contemporary directions, policy relevance

3-5 June 2024. Princeton University

In June 2024 the CCHRI hosted its annual colloquium at Princeton, addressing questions at the interface between History and Policy, in particular climate and environmental policy, reflecting the fact that the past five years have seen multiple breakthroughs in establishing the past as a key dimension for global change researchers and highlighting the need to bring academic researchers together with nonacademic holders of local and traditional knowledge and practitioners attempting to manage resources for sustainability. Twenty-five papers from the meeting will be published in 2025/26 as Bridging History and Policy – Essays on Resilience, Sustainability and Systems Modelling, edited by John Haldon, Lee Mordechai, Ricardo Fernandes and Adam Izdebski. The program, paper abstracts and additional information may be found on the CCHRI website.

Future Events

The 7th CCHRI Intensive Introductory Workshop is in planning and will take place in January 2026 at Princeton. Our program for 2026/7 remains in discussion, but we currently envisage two meetings:

1.  A two-day workshop on past climate-disease linkages at Georgetown University’s Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Italy, in July 2026.
2. Our 8th Intensive Introductory Workshop, in 2026-27 will take place at Georgetown University, at a date to be confirmed. This year it will introduce junior scholars in the humanities to pathogen paleogenetics and related issues relevant to research on past societies.

Some recent CCHRI-related publications

J. Kay, I. Koncz, J. Wilson, R. Singer, L. Mordechai, T. Newfield, ‘Burial Archaeology and the First Plague Pandemic’, Speculum 100(2) (2025), 321-365.

L. Mordechai, J. Haldon, ‘Resilience in Environmental History Discourse: Past, Present and Future?’, American Historical Review 129 (4) (2024), 1420–1450. 

J. Haldon, L. Mordechai, A. Dugmore, M. Eisenberg, G. Endfield, A. Izdebski, R. Jackson, L. Kemp, I. Labuhn, T. McGovern, S. Metcalfe, K. Morrisson, T. Newfield, B. Trump, ‘Past Answers to Present Concerns. The Relevance of the Premodern Past for 21st-Century Policy Planners: Comments on the State of the Field’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 2024.

A. Izdebski, K. Bloomfield, W. J. Eastwood, R. Fernandes, D. Fleitmann, P. Guzowski, J. Haldon, F. Ludlow, J. Luterbacher, J.G. Manning, A. Masi, L. Mordechai, T. Newfield, A.R. Stine, Ç. Şenkul et E. Xoplaki ‘The Emergence of Interdisciplinary Environmental History. Collaborative Approaches to the Late Holocene’, Annales HSS 77 (1) (2024), 11-58.

Morgan, A. M., Paine, A.R., Koç, K., Haldon, J., Hofmeister, E., Cheng, H., Tüysüz, O., Matter, A., Edwards, L.R., Haghipour, N., Hajdas, I. and Fleitmann, D. 2025. ‘Societal Responses to Cold-Season Rainfall Variability: A Speleothem Perspective on Byzantineand Hittite Climate Interactions in Late Holocene Türkiye and Southeast Europe’, Quaternary Science Reviews 359.

We wish you all a productive and prosperous semester and summer!

CCHRI is endorsed by the PAGES organization (Past Global Changes) and is a member of the MedCliVar group (Mediterranean Climate Variability and Predictability). As always, we would like to thank our sponsors at Princeton for their generous support for our activities, in particular the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the High Meadows Environmental Institute, the Center for Collaborative History and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies. We also thank the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and the Georgetown Health Initiative.