RIAS International PhD Seminar – Spring 2025 – Report
From Wednesday 11 to Friday 13 June 2025, the RIAS hosted the spring edition of its biannual International PhD Seminar in Middelburg — the first to be devoted entirely to environmental studies. After the participants arrived on Wednesday afternoon, they were welcomed with an introductory round of drinks at the “Place to Be” bar inside Hotel De Nieuwe Doelen.
The program officially kicked off on Thursday morning with Session 1, “Toxicity”, chaired by Dario Fazzi (RIAS/Leiden University). PhD candidates Catherine Simpson, Airin Farahmand, and Tholithemba Lorenzo Ndaba presented work that ranged from historical air pollution in Maastricht (1850-1950) to the cultural history of plastic in the United States and the legacies of South Africa’s Witwatersrand’s mine dumps.
After lunch, the group participated in a workshop on getting published during their PhD, discussing various outlets for disseminating their work, from book reviews to themed roundtables and journal articles.
Session 2, “Land Use”, was chaired by Roberta Biasillo (Utrecht University). Jonas Danen, Seb Verlinden, and Georg Schäfer compared methodologies that ranged from AI-segmented historical maps to traditional archival research, tracing landscape change from the 17th-century Hudson Valley to the 20th-century Kansas. The day closed with a group dinner at Middelburg’s oldest Italian restaurant, La Piccola Italia.
Friday began with Session 3, “Multispecies”, chaired by Johannes Müller (Leiden University). Sabrina Schettino, Charlotte Meijer, and Daan Jansen explored fur-seal hunting in the North Pacific, early-modern human-insect relations in the Netherlands, and the socio-ecologies of urban rats in Britain and the Low Countries.
The seminar concluded with a discussion on expanding the Dutch Environmental History Network (DEHN) and planning future collaborations and research plans.
The RIAS extends its thanks to all presenters and chairs for making the seminar a success and looks forward to welcoming the next cohort to the next edition, which will take place in November 2025!
A link to the full program can be found here.
Participants and paper titles:
- Catherine Simpson (Utrecht University), Examining the Invisible: The Impact of the Industrial Revolution on Historical Air Pollution in Amsterdam and Maastricht 1850−1950
- Airin Farahmand (Radboud University Nijmegen), The Story of Plastic: From Scientific Marvels to Mundane Objects
- Tholithemba Lorenzo Ndaba (University of Groningen), Mountains that Move: The Witwatersrand’s Mine Dumps as Legacies, Landscapes and Lives
- Jonas Danen (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich), The New World as Garden: Harvesting the Dutch Hudson Valley, 1609−1664
- Seb Verlinden (KU Leuven), Marshes into Farmland: Combining AI−Segmented Maps and Historical Surveys to Assess Landscape Change in the Campine Area (1770−1970)
- Georg Schäfer (Max Planck Institute), Hiding in Plains Sight: Tracing the Emergence of the Technosphere between Kansas’ Dust Bowls
- Sabrina Schettino (University of Eastern Piedmont), Wild Beasts: Fur Seals, Nuu−chah−nulth and Pelagic Sealing in the North Pacific (1860s−1910s)
- Charlotte Meijer (Radboud University Nijmegen), Bugging Bugs: Researching Human−Insect Relations in the Early Modern Netherlands
- Daan Jansen (University of York), Rats! Migrations, Transgressions, Replacements and Perceptions of Urban Rats in Early Modern Britain and the Low Countries
