ICEHO & the next World Congress of EH

The International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations (ICEHO) has now been founded. The aim of ICEHO is to bring together large and small organisations around the world working within the subject area to collaborate, facilitate disciplinary and interdisciplinary communication, create synergy and networks, hold workshops, share teaching and research agendas and to promote the discipline wherever possible.

ICEHO has planned a second World Congress of Environmental History for the last week of July 2014. This will be hosted in the cultural capital of Europe 2012, the beautiful northern Portuguese town of Guimarães. The conference is co-hosted by the University of Minho and the International School Congress/International Workshop on Environmental History group (ISC/IWCH). Calls for papers will be distributed early in 2012.

ENFORMA is one of the organizational members of ICEHO. Dolly Jørgensen, who has been representing ENFORMA, was made Secretary of ICEHO at its meeting in Turku during the recent ESEH meeting. ENFORMA is thus positioned to make a vital contribution to the direction of ICEHO.

Because ICEHO membership costs $100 a year, we passed around the hat at the last Kalamazoo meeting and made enough to cover ENFORMA’s membership for 2011. We will be doing the same at the 2012 Kalamazoo meeting and ask for your generous support.

What’s in a name?

We’re trying to come up with an official name for our network. The current leading suggestion is:

Environmental History Network for the Middle Ages (EHN4MA) which can be pronouned as “enforma”.

We had a few other ideas as well, including Medieval Environmental History Network (MEHN), Network of Medieval Environmental History (NOMEH), Historians of the Medieval Environment (HOME) and The History of the Environment in the Middle Ages (THEMA). The most important thing with the name is that it needs to resonate with both the medieval history community and the environmental history community.

Do you have an opinion about the name? If so, add a comment.