Talk by Lavinia Maddaluno, Assistant Professor of Early Modern History in the Department of Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and 2025–2026 fellow at the Paris IAS as part of the seminar Pratiques environnementales des sociétés médiévales et modernes, organised by Raphaël Morera (CNRS-CRH) and Mickaël Wilmart (EHESS-CRH).

Presentation

This seminar is part of a series held on the first and third Tuesdays of each month from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at 54 Boulevard Raspail.

The relationship between medieval and modern societies and their environments is a growing field of research, helping to renew our understanding of pre-industrial societies. This seminar is part of this movement and aims to focus on the practical construction of environments, examining the practices, techniques, knowledge and institutions through which medieval and modern societies shaped, exploited, harnessed, protected or transformed nature.

The aim is to highlight the diversity of environmental practices, whether they relate to water management, resource exploitation and regulation, landscape shaping, urban planning or risk prevention. This perspective invites us to examine the materiality of human actions, the role of local and scholarly knowledge, as well as the modes of governance and negotiation surrounding environmental uses. It will also provide an opportunity to reflect on the continuities and ruptures in ways of inhabiting and shaping spaces, from the Middle Ages to the modern era, and to contextualise these practices within the social, economic and political dynamics of their time.

By combining case studies with comparative approaches, this seminar thus aims to contribute to a history of the relationship between societies and environments that is attentive to the plurality of experiences, actors and contexts. Finally, it will examine how taking environmental practices into account renews traditional periodisations and enables a long-term history of the socialisation of nature.

See the full program of events for 2025-2026 below.

Full program

4 NOVEMBER 2025 - Raphaël Morera and Mickaël Wilmart, Introduction : quelle histoire de l'environnement avant l'Anthropocène ?

18 NOVEMBER 2025 - Mickaël Wilmart (EHESS-CRH), Entre régulation et partage duvivant: une histoire environnementale de la chasse (XIIIe-XVe.)

2 DECEMBER 2025 - Maxime Martignon (Université Paris Est Créteil), Écrire, décrire et montrer les ressources naturelles des espaces coloniaux français sous Louis XIV (Saint-Domingue années 1680, Guyane années 1690)

16 DECEMBER 2025 - Lise Saussus (EHESS-CRH), Recyclage et métallurgie à la fin du Moyen Age : quand la ville devient la mine

6 JANUARY 2026 - Jean-Baptiste Ortlieb (Université de Strasbourg), « La fabrique des sommets » : interroger les sommets vosgiens et leurs pratiques environnementales sur le temps long (XIIle - XVIIIe siècles), au prisme de l'interdisciplinarité

20 JANUARY 2026 - Juliette Dumasy-Rabineau (Université d'Orléans), Cartes locales et représentation de l'environnement à la fin du Moyen Age

3 FEBRUARY 2026 - Caroline Callard (EHESS - CéSOR), L'exploitation minière : un « paysage total »?

17 FEBRUARY 2026 - Didier Boisseuil (Université de Rouen), Considérations sur l'histoire de l'environnement de la Maremme siennoise à la fin du Moyen Âge

17 MARS 2026 - Benedetta Piazzesi (CRH), Mettre les animaux au travail (dans le physique et dans le moral), XVII-XVIII siècles

7 APRIL 2026 - Tobias Boestad (Université La Rochelle), L'appropriation des littoraux baltiques à la fin du Moyen Âge : enjeux juridiques et environnementaux

5 MAY 2026 - Nicolas Perreaux (CNRS-LAMOP), Archéologie d'une Vallée de larmes. Retour sur l'analyse du champ sémantique médiéval de l'eau par le Text Mining

19 MAY 2026 - Lavinia Maddaluno (Université Ca' Foscari de Venise - IEA de Paris), Rareté : environnements, pouvoirs et imaginaires (XVIIe-XXIe siècles)

Practical informations

For further information about the event, please contact by email: mickael.wilmart@ehess.fr or raphael.morera@ehess.fr.