RHN 96/2026
Organisers: Iain Robertson and Juliette Desportes, University of the Highlands and Islands, Inverness, and Carl Griffin, University of Sussex, UK
Rural History Conference 2027, 7–10 September 2027, Koper, Slovenia
Extended deadline of the Call for Panels: 15 October 2026
Call for Expressions of Interest for a Rural History 2027 Session Proposal:
Resistance to improvement in agrarian Europe, 1750-c.1900
We’re looking to organise a session at Rural History 2027 on resistance to ‘improvement’ in Europe between 1750 and c.1900. Our interest stems from a Leverhulme Trust funded project examining popular responses to improvement – from ‘enclosure’, ‘clearance’, ‘improving’ the landscape through drainage, regulation of woodland, amongst other topics – in the Scottish Highlands and Islands (https://landscapesofprotest.co.uk). Our definition of ‘improvement’ extends to embrace all devices and techniques – both practical and material, technical, scientific, legal, financial, and in terms of policy – that were used to both increase productivity and profitability in the land (and the people that laboured on the land). Papers examining popular opposition to these dynamics framed in a variety of settings – from watery spaces and shorelines, woodland, grazings, marshes and mosses, commons, mountains, moors, and arable land – would be most welcome.
Please send offers of papers to Iain.robertston@uhi.ac.uk, Juliette.Desportes@uhi.ac.uk or Carl.Griffin@sussex.ac.uk
Rural History Conference website: https://ruralhistory2027.fhs.upr.si/
Call for Panels: see RHN 56/2026