Research Seminar

Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist: Impacts of past climate variability – lessons for the 21st century

Date: 15 February 2023
Time: 10:00-11:45

Place: Institute for Futures Studies, Holländargatan 13, Stockholm or online

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Research seminar with Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Professor of History.

ABSTRACT

The talk will start with summarising key findings of state-of-the-art research on how climate variability and change have affected different aspects of human history in medieval and early modern Europe (c. 700–1815 CE). It focuses on the identification and interpretation of causal links between changes in climate and in human societies. Despite considerable recent progress in this research, partly expedited by new palaeoclimate data, large knowledge gaps remain, and the interpretations of findings are shaped by disciplinary differences in approaching causality. The talk will continue with a presentation of the key results from the ongoing interdisciplinary project “Disentangling socio-political and climatic factors for famines in early modern Europe”. The project assesses what made societies more or less vulnerable to food insecurity and famines in Europe (c. 1500–1800), what part climatic factors and socio-political factors played, respectively, and how they interacted. Important preliminary findings will be presented. The talk will conclude with the presentation of the new interdisciplinary project “Adapting to climate change in the northern Baltic Sea region, AD 1500–1900”, funded by Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation. This project will investigate how effects of climate change have varied over time and space as well as how successful different adaptation measures have been. The project is unique in that it will be synchronising historical research questions with contemporary climate impact and adaptation research.


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Join the seminar online or at the Institute for Futures Studies. If you will join on site, please check the box in the registration form.


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