Out of the Blue: A Workshop on oceans past and present

Comment nous adaptons-nous face aux impacts du changement climatique sur les océans ? Emelyn Rude, post-doctorante au Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po (Fonds Bruno Latour), spécialiste de l'environnement et du food system américain, nous propose ce workshop alors que 2025 est consacrée Année de la Mer en France et que Nice accueillera 3e Conférence des Nations unies sur l’Océan.

"Despite the fact that water covers over 70% of our planet’s surface and that an estimated 50-80% of all life on Earth is found underwater, oceans, seas, and the marine ecosystems they contain are dramatically understudied compared to their terrestrial counterparts.

Recent scholarship has begun to push back on this dearth of understanding of ocean worlds, evidenced by the growth of the Blue Humanities and subfields such as the sociology of the oceans. The aim of this workshop is to help foster the development of blue scholarship and interdisciplinary collaboration on the subject at SciencePo to bring together primarily historians with other social scientists across fields who consider the aquatic in some way in their research."

PROGRAM

COFFEE AND WELCOME (9:45-10 am)

MORNING SESSION (10 am - 12:30 pm): 
Understanding Ecologies

The Demise of the Atlantic Grey Whale: New biomolecular archaeological findings on an extirpated whale population.
Youri van den Hurk (Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle)

Tracking Ecological Change Through Culinary Practice: a case study of the Eastern Oyster
Emelyn Rude (Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po)

Selective Transparency: Friction in the rollout of electronic monitoring for fisheries surveillance and management
Oscar Hartman Davies (KTH Stockholm)

Carrying biomolecules and cultural heritage into marine resource exploitation: case studies in marine shagreen and eastern Mediterranean grouper fisheries
Rachel M. Winter (Centre de Recherche sur la Biodiversité et l’Environnement, University of Toulouse, France)

BREAK FOR LUNCH (12:30 pm-1:30 pm)
 

AFTERNOON SESSION (1:30 pm - 3:30 pm): 
Managing Unmanageable Waters

Dutch watermannen deeds on the Chinese coastline, towards a history of the Dutch hydraulic projects 
overseas at the turn of the 19th century
Vincent Harmsen (Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po)

Reconstruction of the territory after Irma: reproduction of pre-existing conditions or reduction of vulnerabilities in Saint-Martin?
Annabelle Moatty (CNRS/Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne/UPEC)

Regulating areas beyond national jurisdiction: lessons learned from climate change litigation
Babette Brophy (Client Earth/University of Cambridge)