1. Working group idea: Conservation in History, History in Conservation

    A few years ago I began thinking about setting up an interdisciplinary group working on the place of history in conservation. Things in my life moved on without ever getting to set it up. Now however my academic trajectory is bringing me back to focus on the history of conservation. Therefore I’m putting this old idea here, in the spirit of Open History, to see if there is any interest out there. Feel free to use the embededd Hypothes.is tab on the right to comment. …


  2. Il sovranismo degli orsi

    Gli orsi del Trentino, dopo qualche anno di silenzio in seguito alla tragica morte dell’orsa Daniza nel 2014, hanno, purtroppo, di nuovo raggiunto l’onore delle cronache con il recente attacco presso i laghi di Lamar. Un altro orso, nel frattempo, in Francia, ha fatto notizia per aver spaventato un gregge di pecore tanto da spingerle a lanciarsi verso la morte in un dirupo. Sotto attacco sui giornali e nel discorso pubblico finisce in questi casi non l’orso singolo, quanto l’intero impianto della tutela e reintroduzione dei grandi predatori in Europa. La questione centrale è come lo stato possa garantire sicurezza personale ed economica alle comunità locali, mentre difende il diritto di animali emblematici, ma considerati pericolosi, di convivere con l’uomo in almeno una parte dei territori in cui sono stati storicamente presenti. In nuce, la tutela degli orsi è una questione di costi e di rischi: chi pagherà i primi e chi sosterrà i secondi? …


  3. Writing group, anyone?

    A while ago Finn Arne Jørgensen (@finnarne) came up with the idea to launch an online writing group, called Green Tomato, dedicated to scholars in the environmental humanities, inspired by the Pomodoro technique and existing Twitter based projects, such as #AcWriMo. The idea was to keep up momentum in our writing and help us to make writing (again) a daily habit. Unfortunately, and in part ironically, the project itself, which was supposed to have its own dedicated blog and formal tracking system, never reached the needed momentum. I was reminded of all this yesterday, after more than a year, reading Jennifer Ahern-Dodson (@jaherndodson) excellent Prof.Hacker guest post on what she learnt from spending June writing every single day. Since, with the beginning of the semester, my writing rhythm had slowed down to the point that it has become ridiculous to even talk about a rhythm, I decided that a writing group is just what I needed to, at least attempt to, meet all the writing deadlines that lie ahead of me. Yes, the company of other people battling against looming word counts would help me … this time. It is not the first time I try; I gave a shot at #AcWriMo in 2013, failing miserably. The worst thing is that I do not even know why; things just seemed to slip away. The only answer I could muster was that the reference group was too big to allow me to really feel involved. Furthermore, Pomodoro just doesn’t seem to tick with me: the 25-minutes slots are just to short for me to write anything in any way significant. I simply spend too much time doing additional research and fact-checking while writing to make it worthwhile. My work methods might not be the best, but I do not think that to revolutionize them totally a couple of months before major deadlines would be the best approach. Reform is my motto! So, this time I'll keep things small and simple (additional features may come infuture, if it works and once I've updated this blog). The attempt will work as follows:</p> I’ll try to write something every working day (and some weekends) I’ll post on Twitter how many words I’ve been able to write (I may or may not also track the time I spent at it) I’ll also specify whether I’ve worked on my main project (a book manuscript), one of many major side projects, or a blog post I’ll not count anything written to prepare for teaching </p> If anyone else wants to join in and share with me his work progresses, they may join me under the hashtag #lazytomato. See you on Twitter!</p> …


  4. Open History

    I am seriously considering the possibility to follow W. Caleb McDaniel's (@wcaleb) steps and set up a wiki or some other system (Github, maybe?) where to make my research process and notes open source (in part they are already, if you look at my Zotero library). Caleb has some very convincing motives to do this, and his blog post on this is definitely the place to look at if you need to be convinced. This will be part of a general overhaul of the whole site, which I hope to be able to undertake some time before the beginning of next semester. I'll try to keep you posted. …


  5. Nida Art Colony

    Photos first, comments will follow. …


  6. Interview with Jane Carruthers

    This interview with Jane Carruthers was held during the VI Simposio SoLCHA in Villa de Leyva, Colombia, 6-8 June 2012, and published on the most recent issue of HALAC - Historia Ambiental Latinoamericana y Caribeña. Here is a full reference: Hardenberg, Wilko Graf von. "Entrevista con Jane Carruthers [Interview with Jane Carruthers]", Historia Ambiental Latinoamericana y Caribeña, Vol 2, No 1 (2012). http://www.fafich.ufmg.br/halac/index.php/periodico/article/view/58 …


  7. RCC Video Portrait


  8. Visualizing #envhist

    These are two visualizations of the users of the #envhist twitter hashtag. The raw data are available as a GoogleDoc, realised thanks to @mhawksey, his wonderful Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet (TAGS), and his continued and effective twitter support. If you feel the need to archive your tweets or a specific hashtag, definitely using TAGS is the best available option. …


  9. Partystorians

    Even if I am an historian by trade, I'm pretty bad as a chronicler or even just as a diarist, and my memory is often even worse. You will thus excuse me if, when @katrinagulliver reminded me that the second #twitterstorians' anniversary was today, I had to recur to all the power of the internet to attempt to reconstruct how I got to know of this virtual society which over the last two years has become more essential to my life as an historian than most learned societies have ever been. …


  10. Attempts in transregional history

    Hereafter you may find the paper I held on June 28 2011 at the 6th ESEH Conference in Turku "Conflict and conservation. Which geographic scale for the history of nature conservation in the Alps?", revised according to some of the feedback I got during the session. …