Research degrees
Landscape and Environment
We explore the complex cultural, political and artistic dimensions of the long 18th-century landscape and environment across multiple disciplines.
The cultural, political, artistic and literary resonances of the landscape and environment have occupied our approach to the long 18th century since our founding, starting with the groundbreaking work of John Barrell and Stephen Copley on the picturesque and labouring people.
Our researchers think about landscape and environment across history, archaeology, literature and history of art, and remain attuned to their complex connections to class, the anthreopocene, empire, industrialisation, extraction, improvement and national identities. We consider the emergence of landscape painting, the urban and built environment, landscape architecture, and environmental writing as part of an ongoing conversation about the relations between nature and artifice, and the translation of nature into art.
We engage with the ethics of attending to, and depicting, the natural world, and related questions of power and pollution in a world of ever widening horizons. In addition to considering the interactions between humans and the environment, we also address the role of animals within the diverse landscapes and ecosystems of the period. In our current era of climate change, research into the 18th century’s landscapes and environment feels more urgent than ever before.
York research journeys - Professor Helen Cowie
While most historians tend to focus their attention on the lives of humans in the past, Helen has chosen to uncover the often forgotten lives of animals.
How were they treated? How did they behave? How did they shape the world around them?
