Blog: Summer of Conferences 2025 and Project Updates
Autumn is closing in – but not here quite yet! That is to say, now is a good time to reflect on our project’s summertime.
Guests from overseas
At the end of spring our project associate Ned Schoolman came for a two month visit to Turku. Ned works as a professor of History in the University of Nevada in the US, and right now he is especially focusing on the history of landscape and land use in the Italian peninsula.
With Ned we got to work on our joint articles and plan on our project’s study trip to Southern Italy, which will take place in November. At the end of May we participated in the Hum-Bio project’s (University of Turku) closing seminar, where Ned gave a lecture “Beyond Consilience: A Case Study on Finding Common Ground between Scientific and Humanistic Narratives of Past Landscape Change.”
Encounters between humans and nature in Rovaniemi
The summer officially began with the International Society for Cultural History (ISCH) conference Human/Nature – Entanglements in Cultural History, which was held 16–19 of June in Rovaniemi. The University of Lapland and the arctic capital offered a brilliant setting for a conference focusing on the relations between humans and nature. To make it better, we finally got to gather together with all of our project members!
Our own forest-centered research topic fit the theme of the conference like a dream, and we got to organize two sessions with the title “Sacred Forests: Religious Perspectives on Human-Nature Relationships Across Time”. The papers given varied greatly by themes and perspectives, and they handled topics from Antiquity to the modern day. You can read more on the sessions here.
On the last day of the conference we had our own session, “Talking About Forests: Medieval Discourses and Practices in Southern Italy”, where Teemu, Anni and Ned presented their research topics and Outi moderated the discussion:
Teemu Immonen: “Concepts of Desert and Forest in the Hagiography of Montecassino during the High Middle Ages”
Anni Hella: “Interplay between Intellectual and Practical Engagements with Forests
in the Monastery of Grottaferrata”
Ned Schoolman: “Cultural and Ecological Inflection Points: Drivers of Long-term
Landscape Change in Early Medieval Italy”
The conference summer continues in Poland
After Rovaniemi and Midsummer Anni traveled to Katowice to take part in the conference “When God created the heavens and the earth: Nature in hexaemeral literature beyond Basil and Ambrose” (24‒25 June).
The two days of the conference included papers on the theology and historical interpretations of nature and all creation. Anni’s paper dealt with a text by John of Damascus (n. 676‒749) known as An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (Ἔκδοσις ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως), which is also found from the archives of the Grottaferrata monastery. Her subject was the text’s portrayal of nature: how did the Syrian church father see the relationship between human, nature and God, and how did nature have a prominent role in discussions on the orthodox faith. In the informal gatherings and the conference dinner Anni also had the chance to talk in detail about our project with the other participants, who found our work exiting.
Autumn is closing in – what’s ahead?
In the autumn period we will be mainly working on the project’s article publications, but that is definitely not all. In 27th of October and 8th of December we will give public lectures on the meanings of forests in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The lectures are part of the TUCEMEMS Studia Generalia lecture series, with a theme Relationship between humans and nature from Antiquity to the Early Modern period. The lectures are held publicly in the Turku City Library, do come and join us!
In November we will travel to Southern Italy for a study trip. There we will visit sites of major importance for the project and work in the archives of Monte Cassino and Grottaferrata. The trip begins in 11th of November with a workshop-seminar in Villa Lante, the Finnish Institute in Rome, organized together with our project partners.
In addition to this website we also give updates on the project on our Bluesky account, do give us a follow!