Environmental History I

Symposium
Environment

Climate, environment and human activity: shall we rethink History?

The first Environmental History symposium continues the work that began with LUMA Eco Days in 2019. It sets the foundation for an extensive research project that aims to explore how human interactions with the environment have evolved throughout time.

The symposium will look at the concept of the environment as a constantly evolving set of unstable data. The environment changes through multiple circumstances, often involving the human species. Environmental History provides an incredibly rich context that can help us understand the transformation of societies within the environments they have created, or with which they have evolved.

How do societies develop their understanding of the environment through processes of interdependency? Why is it important to analyze the past and present of our environmental thinking at this moment in time? How can we reposition the notion of non-human agents— whether these be animals, forests, soil, air, or bacteria—as key protagonists in historical processes?

The Environmental History symposium aims to reassess and rethink human reality and history from diverse perspectives as a framework defined by complexity and continuous transformation. It brings together voices from multiple disciplines including ecologists, climate experts, and researchers, alongside artists, architects, designers, and philosophers to begin outlining this complex and fascinating field of inquiry.

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Credits

Thursday, Aug. 25

10:30 a.m.: What Can Environmental History Do? The Environmental Historian and His Fellow
With Grégory Quenet, Professor of Environmental History, University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
11:10 a.m.: Faunal Nationalism in an Emerging Economy: Tigers, Science and Society, 1969–2019
With Mahesh Rangarajan, Head of the Department of Environmental Studies, Ashoka University
11:40 a.m.: Restoring Ancient Futures
With Mark D. Spence, Professor at Oregon State University
12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.: Break
1:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.: Screening: The Haunted, HD video, 23'
With Saodat Ismailova, artist
2:00 p.m.: Land-Grabs on Agricultural Lands
With Lucile Leclair, journalist
2:15 p.m.: Are Plants Invasive?
With Véronique Mure, Botanist and Engineer in Tropical Agronomy
2:30 p.m.: The Camargue Between Two Waterways: The Rhône and the Sea
With Estelle Rouquette, Curator of the Camargue Museum and Deputy Director of the Camargue Regional Nature Park
3:10 p.m.: Living with the Mistral: The Past and Future of Regional Climate Adaptation in France
With Catherine T. Dunlop, Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of Modern European History, Montana State University (Bozeman), and Gallery Editor of Environmental History
3:50 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.: Break
4:00 p.m.: Living with Heat: Bodies and People in Urban India's Changing Climate
With Amita Baviskar, Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology-Anthropology, Ashoka University, India
4:30 p.m.: Addressing the History of Environmental Struggles
With Steve Hagimont, Associate Professor at Paris-Saclay University (UVSQ)
5:00 p.m.: Discussion: Why Has Nothing Changed? Perspectives on Environmental Struggles
With Amita Baviskar, Catherine T. Dunlop, Lucile Leclair, Steve Hagimont, and Martin Guinard.

Friday, Aug. 26

10:30 a.m.: Tales of an Urban Forest: Multispecies Alliances in Morro de Babilônia, Rio de Janeiro, 1995–2020
With Lise Sedrez, Associate Professor, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, History Institute
11:00 a.m.: Writing the Environmental History of 18th-Century Paris Through Its Gardens
With Jan Synowiecki, Former Student of the École Normale Supérieure Ulm, Historian, and Doctor of Modern History
11:30 a.m.: Urban Microclimates
With Bas Smets, Landscape Architect and Designer of the LUMA Park
12:00 p.m.: Discussion: Gardens for Changing the City
With Lise Sedrez, Bas Smets, Jan Synowiecki, and Martin Guinard.
12:30 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.: Break
2:15 p.m.: Retrofutur: From the History of Energy Innovations to Retro-Tech
With Loic Rogard, Independent Interdisciplinary Researcher in Energy and Environment, Historian of Energy, Paris Diderot
2:30 p.m.: Centre for Contemporary Nature: Pyro-Forensis
With Samaneh Moafi, Senior Researcher at Forensic Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London
3:00 p.m.: Hell on Earth
With Timothy Morton, Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University (Texas) and Director of the Cool America Foundation [via Zoom]
3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.: Break
4:00 p.m.: Of Bark and Lead: In Search of Stories to Embark on the Critical Zone
With Claire Dutrait, PhD Candidate in the Practice and Theory of Literary and Artistic Creation, CIELAM – Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, Aix-Marseille University
4:15 p.m.: Stop Saving the Planet!
With Jenny Price, Public Writer, Artist, Historian, Sam Fox School, Washington University in St. Louis
4:45 p.m.: Preparing for an Urban Exodus?
With Sébastien Marot, PhD, HDR, Professor of Environmental History at the Paris School of Architecture and Urban Planning (Éav&T) and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
5:15 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.: Discussion: Why Has Everything Changed? The Future of Environmental History
With Jenny Price, Sébastien Marot, Timothy Morton, Maria Finders, Samaneh Moafi, and Grégory Quenet.

Saturday, Aug. 27

2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.: Ways of Seeing Nature: Story Writing Workshop
We live in an age of environmental crisis, and the stories we tell about the places we inhabit matter. Join historians Jenny Price (USA) and Grégory Quenet (France) for a fun and interactive workshop on writing compelling stories about our everyday environments—from what we plant in our gardens and why we cherish parks to where our electricity comes from and where our wastewater goes.

How do we interact with our everyday environments in a place like Arles? Who benefits the most? And what exactly is the environment, anyway—and why does that question matter so much?

With Jenny Price, Public Writer, Artist, Historian, Sam Fox School, Washington University in St. Louis, and Grégory Quenet, Professor of Environmental History, University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.

Amita Baviskar

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Amita Baviskar is a Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology & Anthropology at Ashoka University. Currently, she is working on food and changing agrarian environments in Central India and studying the social experience of air pollution and heat in Delhi.

Catherine T. Dunlop

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Catherine Tatiana Dunlop is an Associate Professor of History and the Director of Graduate Studies in History at Montana State University, Bozeman. Her current book manuscript focuses on the environmental and cultural history of the mistral wind in southern France. She currently serves as Editor of the Gallery (visual culture) section of the journal Environmental History.

Claire Dutrait

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Claire Dutrait is an Author, Co-Founder of the collective Urbain, trop urbain, and a Doctoral student in Practice and Theory of Literary and Artistic Creation (Centre interdisciplinaire d'étude des littératures d'Aix-Marseille, ED354). Her research and writing focus on polluted territories and the narratives that run through them.

Steve Hagimont

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Steve Hagimont works on the history of past relationships with nature and its symbolic and material transformation. He focuses his studies primarily on tourism and nature conservation and is interested in the critique of science.

Saodat Ismailova

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Saodat Ismailova is a filmmaker and artist from Uzbekistan who came of age in the post-Soviet era and has established her artistic career between Paris and Tashkent. Interweaving rituals and dreams within the tapestry of everyday life, her films investigate the historically complex and multilayered culture of Central Asia. She graduated from Tashkent’s State Institute of Arts and Culture and Le Fresnoy, National Studio for Contemporary Arts in Tourcoing. In 2021, she founded the DAVRA research collective in Central Asia.

She has had solo exhibitions at Swiss Institute (2026), Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan (2024–2025), Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam (2023), Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing (2023), and Centre for Contemporary Arts Tashkent (2019). Her work has been presented in numerous collective exhibitions, including the Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection (2026), the Fondation Pernod Ricard (2025), Venice Biennale (2013, 2022), documenta fifteen (2022), and major international film festivals. In 2022, she received the Eye Art & Film Prize, Amsterdam, and the Art Basel Gold Award in 2025.

Lucile Leclair

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Journalist and author, Lucile Leclair is an expert on agriculture and food issues. She has written three books published by Editions du Seuil and collaborated with Le Monde diplomatique. She teaches at the École supérieure de journalisme (ESJ) in Lille.

Sébastien Marot

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Sébastien Marot holds a Master of Philosophy, a PhD in History and an Accreditation to supervise research in environmental history. Between 1986 and 2002, he was a general delegate of the French Society of Architects in Paris, and launched the journal Le Visiteur (1994-2003).

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Christof Mauch

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Christof Mauch is Director of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society and chair in American Culture and Transatlantic Relations at LMU Munich. He is also an affiliated professor in the History Faculty of LMU Munich and an honorary professor and honorary fellow at the Center for Ecological History at Renmin University in China. He is one of the leading figures in the field, with over 100 presentations in over 25 countries, with specialization in China, US and Germany. His publications include “Slow Hope, in Aeon” March 11, 2020 and (in German) “Paradise Blues: Travels through American Environmental History” (2022).

Samaneh Moafi

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Dr. Samaneh Moafi is the Senior Researcher at Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary team based at Goldsmiths, University of London. She earned her PhD from the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) with a dissertation on the contemporary history of state-initiated mass housing in Iran and the class identities and gender roles it informed.

Timothy Morton

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Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University and Director of the Cool America Foundation. They have collaborated with many artists including Laurie Anderson, Björk, Jennifer Walshe, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges and Olafur Eliasson. Morton has written 20 books that have been translated into 13 languages as well as 300 essays on ecology and philosophy in all aspects of culture.

Véronique Mure

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Botanist and Tropical Agronomy Engineer. Her professional career has been primarily in the public sector, for the Pont du Gard site, the Occitanie Region, and the Nîmes-Métropole agglomeration.

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Jenny Price

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Jenny Price is the author of Stop Saving the Planet: An Environmentalist Manifesto. A Public Writer, Artist, and Historian, she works passionately on environmental justice, and is a Research Fellow at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University-St. Louis.

Grégory Quenet

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Grégory Quenet is one of the pioneers of environmental history and the environmental humanities in France. Since 2012, he has been a professor of environmental history at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (Paris-Saclay). Founder of the French portal for environmental humanities, he organized the eighth European Society for Environmental History Conference in Versailles in 2015. Since its creation in 2024, he has been codirector of the Environmental Humanities research department at the Collège des Bernardins, where he held the Laudato si’: For a New Exploration of the Earth chair from 2021 to 2023. His latest book, Histoire de la pensée écologique (History of Ecological Thought), was published by PUF in May 2025. Since 2021, he has served as a scientific advisor for the Environmental History program at LUMA Arles.

Mahesh Rangarajan

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Mahesh Rangarajan is Professor of Environmental Studies and History. He served as corresponding editor of Environment and History (1996-2000), and was also on the editorial board of Conservation and Society (2003-2009). He is the author of Nature and Nation (2015), Nature Without Borders (2014), and India’s Wildlife History (2001). Furthermore, he co-edited People, Parks and Wildlife: Towards Coexistence (2000).

Loïc Rogard

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Loïc Rogard is a research associate at Atelier 21, a think-do-tank led by designer and artist Cédric Carles. He works with Atelier 21 to develop Paléo-énergétique, a participatory research initiative based on crowdsourcing. The project aims to identify, share, and highlight past and present energy practices in order to inspire the world of tomorrow.

Estelle Rouquette

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Estelle Rouquette is a Doctor of Art History and Archeology. As Assistant Director of the Camargue Regional Nature Park, she organizes cultural projects, heritage, architecture, landscape, energy, and environmental education and awareness. She is also the Director of the Camargue Museum.

Lise Sedrez

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Lise Sedrez is Associate Professor in History of the Americas at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and a CNPQ researcher. She created the Online Bibliography on Latin America Environmental History in 1999. She is also a founding member of the Sociedad Latino-Americana y Caribeña de Historia Ambiental, and a Rachel Carson Center Fellow-Landhaus 2022.

Bas Smets

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Bas Smets, born in 1975 in Belgium, is a landscape architect with a multidisciplinary background that has shaped his unique approach to creating innovative and sustainable urban spaces. He founded his firm in 2007 in Brussels which has since built over 50 international projects, including the LUMA Parc des Ateliers in Arles, the Thurn & Taxis Park in Brussels, the Sunken Garden in London, and the Himara Waterfront in Albania. In 2022, Smets won the prestigious international competition to redesign the public space surrounding Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Smets' approach is characterized by his concept of "Augmented Landscapes," which utilizes natural processes to create new microclimates. He often collaborates with artists and scientists, reflecting his commitment to interdisciplinary innovation.

2023, Smets was appointed Professor in Practice at the Graduate School of Design of Harvard University, where he continues to explore inventive ways to transform urban environments into ecological systems capable of mitigating climate change. His visionary approach to landscape architecture offers a promising path forward for making cities more resilient to the challenges of the climate crisis.

Mark D. Spence

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Mark Spence’s scholarship involves work in environmental history, Indigenous histories, the history of the American West and national parks history. His first book, *Dispossessing the Wilderness,* and the articles that precede it created many debates within the National Park Service.

Jan Synowiecki

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Jan Synowiecki is a Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Caen, Normandy. He is a Specialist in Modern Environmental History and is currently working on an Environmental History of French North America.