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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Annie TindleyORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
This introduction sets the scene for the special issue, laying out itsoverarching aims and approach in order to contextualise the highlydiverse range of methodologies, evidence and data, chronologies andthemes that follow in the articles. We set out the ways in whichas a discipline we can explore the place of historical analysis inproviding empirical data to better inform approaches to pressingcontemporary climate and environmental concerns, debates at whichScotland has been at an acrimonious forefront. As historians we arein a strong position to understand how the historical record evidencesways in which communities and nations (including what would becomeScotland) adapted technology, cultures and economies to climate andenvironmental changes. Discussing some contemporary policy examplesand challenges we explore the risks of historians remaining apart fromdebates about Scotland’s environmental future. We also consider theways in which environmental history approaches give us opportunitiesto think more conceptually about periodisation, chronology and placein the Scottish past; how it shifts our traditional periodisation but alsocategorisations—economic, social, political, cultural. We also discuss thefundamentally interdisciplinary approach required, which brings multipleopportunities but also complexities: how can we talk to each othereffectively across disciplines to bring new and evidenced perspectives onour past and future? What languages do we need to develop to do so? Aswe lay out in this Introduction, we hope this special issue will help advancethe debate collaboratively.
Author(s): Main R, Oram R, Tindley A
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Scottish Historical Review
Year: 2025
Volume: 104
Issue: 2
Pages: 155-173
Online publication date: 01/09/2025
Acceptance date: 10/03/2025
Date deposited: 08/08/2025
ISSN (print): 0036 9241
ISSN (electronic): 1750-0222
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.3366/shr.2025.0717
DOI: 10.3366/shr.2025.0717
ePrints DOI: 10.57711/hvf9-3x49
Notes: This is the introduction to a special issue I have co-edited on behalf of the SHR
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