CEAH seminars and symposia provides a forum for the exploration of themes central to the environmental arts and humanities and aim to link an emerging community of UK researchers with relevant international initiatives.

An inaugural CEAH Symposium was held on September 11-12, 2013. On the afternoon of the 11th a group of over 80 academics and interested others gathered to celebrate the launch of the Centre and take part in a public conversation. The launch was followed by a keynote lecture from Peter Coates, an environmental historian at the University of Bristol, titled ‘Creatures of heritage: enshrining animals as national and global treasures’.

The symposium continued with a day-long workshop on the 12th, structured around invited papers from historians, literary scholars, biologists, writers, artists, geographers, archaeologists and philosophers. A series of short presentations opened up conversation about the relevance of the ‘environmental humanities’ for researchers in the UK (and beyond) and led to the compilation of a list of thorny questions which were then discussed in the afternoon session. The full symposium programme (which includes short biographies of the participants) is available here.

The events were supported by the Environment and Sustainability Theme of Exeter’s HASS strategy and the Environment and Sustainability Institute.