Society and the Sea 2018 – Call for Papers

After the Greenwich Maritime Centre’s successful first conference, Society and the Sea (in September 2016) we are now preparing for our second conference to run in September 2018. The aim of the conference will be on bringing together a wide range of perspectives and stakeholders (for instance academia, industry, charities) dealing with society and maritime issues. If you would like to learn more about the opportunities (including promotional and sponsorship) and would like to discuss things further please email us at gmc@greenwich.ac.uk

CALL-FOR-PAPERS

The call-for-papers is now live and we are welcoming submissions:

please visit: http://www.gre.ac.uk/society-and-the-sea/home/call-for-papers

or: http://bit.ly/2zLacWQ

SAVE THE DATE

Thursday 6th and Friday 7th September 2018 in your diaries!

and visit: http://www.gre.ac.uk/society-and-the-sea for more information!

Too Big to Ignore – Social Wellbeing and the Values of Small-scale Fisheries

Too Big To Ignore (TBTI http://toobigtoignore.net) has published a book on the “Social Wellbeing and the Values of Small-scale Fisheries” edited by Derek Johnson, Natasha Stacey, Julie Urquhart and Greenwich Maritime Centre’s director Tim Acott!

This book advances discussions of values in fisheries by showing the rich theoretical insights and connections possible when value is ground in a multi-dimensional social well being approach. Questions of value have long been a central, if often unacknowledged, concern in maritime studies and in research on fisheries. Social scientists have looked at changing perceptions of value as coastal regions and fisheries have industrialized, economic interconnections have deepened, ecosystems have been depleted, shifts in population have occurred, and governance arrangements have been transformed.

You can find out more, and links to order, here: http://toobigtoignore.net/tbti-publishes-a-book-on-the-social-wellbeing-and-the-values-of-ssf/

 

Art, Resilience and Porosity in the Coastal Zone by Simon Read at the University of Greenwich – Tuesday 5th December

There is less than a month to sign up for your free ticket to our next GMC & CMRG Seminar at the University of Greenwich.

It is an anomaly that whilst most coastal communities consider the continuing resilience of the coast and its defences a priority, there is a growing belief from the policy development sector that this should flow from a reinvigorated climate of social resilience. This begs the question of who is responsible to deliver resilience? From a community point of view the expectation persists that this is the duty of a benign authority, which recently has provoked a profound sense of betrayal when it is realized that this may not be so. This in turn evolves from a belief in the inherent value of coastal landscape, which is valued as much for its cultural significance as it is a source of livelihood. The bonds that tie people to place make them determined that the configuration of the landscape should remain as it always was or as it always was presumed to be. Although in reality it may be tenuous, it is nonetheless deeply rooted in the community psyche that a landscape that is inherently changeful is also predictable, consistent and cyclical in spite of copious evidence to the contrary.

Find out more, read the rest of the seminar description and sign up for your free ticket at our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/art-resilience-and-porosity-in-the-coastal-zone-tickets-39039862279

Das Meer: Maritime Welten in der Frühen Neuzeit / The Sea: Maritime Worlds in the Early Modern Period. Conference report by Dr Michael Talbot.

The history of the sea is going through an exciting period of rejuvenation and reinvention, evidenced by a number of recent innovative conferences, not least the 2017 ‘State of Maritime History Research’ held at the University of Greenwich. Across one body of water, our colleagues in Germany have also been thinking hard about things maritime, and a major gathering of German and international scholars was held in the historic Herzog August Bibliothek in the chocolate box town of Wolfenbüttel from 5 to 7 October 2017, generously supported by the German Research Foundation.

Organised by the Working Group on Early Modern History in the German Historians’ Association, this three-day maritime extravaganza was entitled ‘Das Meer: Maritime Welten in der Frühen Neuzeit / The Sea: Maritime Worlds in the Early Modern Period’. Twenty-three panels manned by a range of early career and established historians and curators, as well as maritime professionals, sought to explore some broad questions about the role of the sea in early modern history (c.1450-1800).

Schloss Wolfenbüttel, one of the conference venues

 

The conference dealt with some of the standard sources and ideas of maritime history, thinking about the sea as a contact zone between cultures, a commercial and migration superhighway, and, of course, a site of political contention. Yet the organisers also wanted to get the participants to think about, to use their words, ‘the perceptions, imaginations, and experiences of those living by, on, and off the sea’. This approach produced some of the most exciting papers, but also raised a number of issues.

As a conference with consecutive panels, I didn’t get to see everything that I wanted to, but what I did see provided much food for thought. The first panel on connected seas and oceans with examples from the North Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic set the tone for a conference that was genuinely comparative, and thoughtful in the comparisons it made. ‘Connectivity’ is a something of a buzzword, but here the links between the papers in terms of law and logistics were fascinating. My own panel, organised by the brilliant Dr Isabelle Schürch, thought about ports and their solid and liquid hinterlands as spaces of ‘transfer and transformation’, with examples from New Spain, Istanbul, and St Helena.

One of my favourite panels came on the morning of the second day, entitled ‘pirates matter / pirate matters’. Moving beyond the well-worn tropes of popular culture, this panel really showed what different frameworks could do to really help us understand experiences and perceptions of the sea and life at sea, from Richard Blakemore’s study of the role of violence to Claire Jowitt’s queering of piracy, to Daniel Lange’s excellent paper on English pirate maps in the later 17th century. Another superb contribution came with ‘a history of drowning and lifesaving in the 18th century’, where all the panellists had come to the topic of lifesaving through previous work on the history of suicide. A special mention must go to Charlotte Colding Smith of the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven, whose fellow panellists for the panel ‘Natur an Bord: Schiffstransport und frühneuzeitliche Wissensgeschichte [Nature on board: Maritime transport and the history of early modern knowledge]’ had been stranded due to a major storm disrupting transport in northern Germany. She gave her paper on the display of whales in early modern collections nonetheless, and it was one of the highlights of the conference.

The keynote by Neil Safier of the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island – another major repository of early modern learning – presented a number of fascinating ideas and challenges. He spoke about the success of the ‘oceanic turn’ in early modern studies that has challenged the dominance of the land, but at the same time, he argued, it has become clearer that we cannot talk about oceans without talking about continents – and vice versa. This oceanic turn, that has moved us away from stories dominated by the state and by swashbucklers to more mundane but important stories of ordinary sailors, indigenous peoples, and marine life itself, also then links the sea more closely with the land.

Before the keynote in the August Herzog Bibliothek

 

This is important. But it also poses problems for those of us who think about and value the sea as a distinct set of spaces, who appreciate links to the land but also understand that solid ground continues to dominate historical writing. Many of the papers at the conference in Wolfenbüttel were only tenuously maritime. In several presentations, the words ‘sea’, ‘water’, or ‘sailor’ weren’t even mentioned. This is the challenge of dealing with the ‘perceptions’ and ‘imaginations’ element of maritime history, and when ‘experiences’ become perhaps a bit too abstract. This is not to say that such approaches do not provide valuable insights. Rather, it is to say that we must perhaps be more precise in what we think we mean about this ever-challenging term, ‘maritime history’.

Dr Michael Talbot

Lecturer in the History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Middle East

Department of History, Politics and Social Sciences

University of Greenwich

Staff Profile

https://gre.academia.edu/MichaelTalbot

http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com

docblog.ottomanhistorypodcast.com

Out now: British-Ottoman Relations, 1661-1807: Commerce and Diplomatic Practice in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul

 

The Maritime Origins of Abolition: The Case of Benjamin Lay, Quaker and ‘Common Sailor’

This series, convened by the National Maritime Museum and held at the Institute of Historical Research, explores humankind’s relationship with the sea through museum and archive collections. At is heart is the idea that our history is entwined with the maritime world and that people’s lives have always been shaped by the sea. Bringing together established names and new researchers, the series draws upon a range of different approaches to encourage debate and discussion.

26 October 2017

Professor Marcus Rediker

University of Pittsburgh

The Maritime Origins of Abolition: The Case of Benjamin Lay, Quaker and ‘Common Sailor’

Location: The Institute of Historical Research, University of London, Senate House, London WC1E 7HU

*This seminar will start at 17:30 in The Chancellor’s Hall and will take on a Thursday rather than a Tuesday.*

Please visit our website for more information and links:

http://www.gre.ac.uk/ach/gmc/seminar-series/maritime-history-and-culture-seminars

“The Future of the Ocean: Health, Wealth and Biodiversity” Seminar at the University of Greenwich.

The Greenwich Maritime Centre is very proud to announce our first 2017-2018 seminar in collaboration with the Coastal and Marine Research Group:

“The Future of the Ocean: Health, Wealth and Biodiversity”

with Professor Steve Fletcher

Venue: University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College, 30 Park Row, London SE10 9LS

Lecture Theatre QA080.

Tickets are free but please sign up using our Eventbrite form so we can keep control of the numbers: 

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-future-of-the-ocean-health-wealth-and-biodiversity-tickets-38078313260

There is increasing appreciation of the critical role the oceans play in human health and sustainable economic growth.  As is well known, the ocean provides the basic building blocks to support life through its regulation of climate and global temperature, but we are now also appreciating the role of the ocean in supporting the quality of our health through providing new drugs from the deep sea and spaces for relaxation, de-stressing, and personal restoration. In parallel, the OECD (2016) has estimated that the global ocean economy currently supports 350m jobs and has a value in the order of US$1.5 trillion per annum (2–3% of the world’s gross domestic product).  Yet there is a strong belief that the wealth derived from the ocean can be increased still further through ‘blue growth’ and ‘blue economy’ policies that provide new opportunities to tap into ocean and coastal resources. Biodiversity lies at the heart of ocean health and wealth, yet its place in ocean governance remains ambiguous, particularly in areas beyond national jurisdiction.  This presentation will explore these themes and consider how we can navigate towards a future for the ocean that supports health, wealth and biodiversity.

For more information and links to the other seminars in the series please visit:

http://www.gre.ac.uk/ach/gmc/seminar-series/gmc-and-cmrg-seminar-series/monday-30th-october-2017

‘all that rag-tag and bobtail from town’

‘all that rag-tag and bobtail from town’: seaside reading for Londoners, from Dickens to Barbara Cartland

6:30pm 11th October 2017

A talk by Carolyn Oulton, Canterbury Christ Church University

Kent History and Library Centre, James Whatman Way, Maidstone ME14 1LQ

 

To book: Call 03000 416438 or email archives@kent.gov.uk

Admission fee £5

www.kent.gov.uk/archives

‘A Plaice for Everything’ Talk by GMC’s Director Dr Tim Acott

‘People, Plaice and Chips: Fisheries and sense of place.’ The management of fisheries tends to focus on economic and biological factors with cultural issues often neglected.

Dr Tim Acott FRGS, Director of the Greenwich Maritime Centre, puts forward the idea that sense of place can be used to make visible a range of social and cultural values that emerge from the process of marine fishing.

He will give a talk, ‘People, Plaice and Chips: Fisheries and sense of place’ at the Fleur hall at 7.30pm on Monday, 20  November.

For more information and links for tickets: http://www.favershamsociety.info/talks/a-plaice-for-everything/

And for more information on The Faversham Society please visit their website: http://www.favershamsociety.org/