Humanities World Report 2015

Reserch Trend

Tasting the ocean: How to increase ocean literacy using seafood heritage with a visceral approach

This contribution explores the growing interest in ocean literacy and sustainable seafood consumption through the lens of transdisciplinary and visceral research methods. It illustrates a series of experimental, marine-focused workshops, carried out during the Covid-19 pandemic for Irish students aged between 15 and 18. The empirical body builds on a series of questionnaires completed prior, during and at the end of the workshops as well as direct observations of feedbacks and interactions. By offering to the students creative and playful methods which included cooking classes, coastal explorations and information about their coastal cultural heritage, we argue that transdisciplinary and visceral methods can facilitate how ocean literacy and sustainable eating is understood and operationalised—in both educational programmes and policy frameworks

Humanities World Report 2015

Social Policy, Culture and Media Policy, Literature, Cultural Theor

[version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]

UIDB/04666/2020 UIDP/04666/2020We contend that the harvest of marine resources played a critical, but as yet underappreciated and poorly understood, role in global history. In a review of the field of marine environmental history and archaeology we conclude that while much progress has been made, especially in the last two decades, fundamental questions remain unanswered. In order to make full use of the rapid growth of Big Data and ongoing methodological breakthroughs there is a need for collaborative and comparative research. Such joint efforts on a global scale must be guided by a focus on common, simple yet challenging, questions. We propose a Human Oceans Past research agenda to call for multi- and trans-disciplinary archaeological, historical and palaeoenvironmental/palaeoecological research to investigate: (1) when and where marine exploitation was of significance to human society; (2) how selected major socio-economic, cultural, and environmental forces variously constrained and enabled marine exploitation; and (3) what were the consequences of marine resource exploitation for societal development. We contend that this agenda will lead to a fundamental revision in our understanding of the historical role of marine resources in the development of human societies.publishersversionpublishe

Chapter 1 Cowboys, Cod, Climate, and Conflict

The DEH can be seen as an academic response to three major interwoven changes and challenges: the digital revolution; global warming and global warming and social-political agency related to environmental change. In the twenty-first century, we are challenged with a transformation in human collective intelligence. The key features of this transformation involve the “digital” replacing the “analogue”; design thinking and post-secularism supplanting tradition; and human agency emerging as the main driver of planetary change. Unlocking the keys to human perception, mitigating behavior and adaptive action may likely rank among the preeminent challenges we face in an age witnessing unprecedented rates of global change. The chapter showcases how the DEH is being applied by three international funded research projects: Larry McMurtry’s Literary Geography; NorFish (Environmental History of the North Atlantic Fisheries, 1500-1800); and the Climates of Conflict in Babylonia project