Following the success of the 2025-2026 edition, the Entangled Histories Seminar Series invites abstracts for its 2026–2027 cycle devoted to the theme “Borders and Sustainability: Human and Natural Resources across Time and Space”.
This edition explores sustainability not only as an environmental concern but as a multifaceted concept that intersects with borders in diverse ways. The series adopts a diachronic and interdisciplinary perspective, spanning from prehistory to the contemporary world, and welcomes contributions that examine sustainability across different cultural, material, and ecological contexts.
The series seeks to investigate sustainability in its multiple dimensions, including but not limited to:
Material sustainability: Such as the recycling of resources and materials (e.g., material objects such as manuscripts, palimpsests, architectural structures, etc., texts and landscapes).
Ecological sustainability: Focusing on the relationships between humans, animals, and environments, as well as the balance between preservation and exploitation.
Social and cultural sustainability: Examining the transmission of knowledge, practices of care, migration, and the resilience of communities over time.
Symbolic sustainability: Exploring representations of ecological limits, hybrid beings, and cultural imaginaries of nature and borders.
The Concept of Borders: At the heart of the series lies the concept of borders, which are understood as dynamic thresholds that shape access to resources, mediate human–non-human relations, and regulate interactions across time and space. Borders are not only physical or political—they can also be ecological, cultural, social, and material. They act as sites of negotiation, exchange, adaptation, and sometimes conflict, where sustainability is continually redefined.
The series is framed by an awareness of long-term temporalities and global spatial entanglements, bringing into dialogue different historical strata—from prehistoric worlds to contemporary infrastructures.
The four classical elements (earth, water, air, and fire) serve as a heuristic framework to explore the material, ecological, and symbolic dimensions of sustainability across cultures and periods. Sustainability is understood as a relational and cultural process, shaped by the ongoing interaction among environments, societies, and systems of knowledge.
We encourage contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to:
Archaeology and Prehistory: Resource use, landscapes, indigenous practices, and environmental interactions over time.
Medieval Studies, Philology, and Manuscript Cultures: Material sustainability of manuscripts, recycled palimpsests, intellectual ecologies, and the transmission of knowledge.
Art History and Visual Culture: Representations of nature, landscapes, borders, and material practices across different periods.
Anthropology and Folklore: Vernacular ecological knowledge, oral traditions, liminal beings, and environmental imaginaries.
History of Science and Medicine: Healing practices, scientific knowledge, and environmental understanding across cultures.
Environmental Humanities and Ecology: Human–non-human relations, ecosystems, climate, and resilience.
History of Economy, Trade, and Food Systems: Circulation of resources, subsistence, scarcity, and sustainability practices.
Architecture and Infrastructure Studies: Built environments, water and/or soil management, roads, and material borders.
Geography, Cartography, and Media Studies: Spatial representation, mapping, and communication of environmental knowledge across borders.
We also welcome contributions addressing migration, sacred landscapes, environmental memory, resource management, borderlands, media ecologies, and cultural imaginaries of sustainability, including symbolic representations such as hybrid beings, monsters, and ecological limits.
Format: Online seminar (Approx. 30-minute presentation followed by discussion).
Schedule: October 2026 – Summer 2027.
Proposals must be submitted in English and in a single document, including the following details:
Title of the proposed paper.
Abstract (250–300 words).
Short biographical note (100–150 words).
Institutional affiliation (if any).
Contact email.
Preferred months of availability (between October 2026 and Summer 2027).
đź“Ą Submit your proposals to:
entangledhistories.seminars [@] outlook.com
Deadline for abstracts: 31 August 2026
Notification of acceptance: By 30 September 2026
A selection of the most significant contributions will be published in a special issue or in a dedicated edited volume.