Dr Nicola Whyte

Nicola Whyte is Associate Professor of History and Environmental Humanities, and is internationally known for her work on pre-modern histories of landscape, environment and society. She has extensive experience of archival research and developing interdisciplinary methods and approaches that work against the grain of traditional narrative and epistemological frameworks, to show how through history new imaginaries for the future are possible. She has made a recognised contribution to History by engaging interdisciplinary landscape and environmental humanities approaches to the historical record and challenging conventional understanding. Her original and innovative work on the early modern period bridges landscape studies and early modern social history. She has published work exploring: the interacting processes of custom, place, memory and identity in early modern communities; landscapes as embodied experience; and contemporary interpretions, appropriations and re-uses of the physical remains of the past.

 

She has collaborated on a number of externally and internally funded projects and has collaborated on large consortium grants with a strong emphasis on industry and public engagement: Stories of Change: The Past, Present and Future of Energy (AHRC PI Joe Smith); and The Past in its Place (ERC PI Philip Schwyzer). She has an extensive track record of publishing single-and co-authored outputs, frequently working with others outside her discipline (with Krause and Garde-Hansen ‘Flood Memories’ , 2012; with Joe Smith et al ‘Gathering around Stories’, 2017;  with Goodbody ‘Pandaemonium’ 2019; and with artist Henrietta Simson ‘Vertical Horizons’ (forthcoming AMPS 2025) to provide innovative contributions to historical knowledge beyond History.

 

She recently designed and in 2023 launched the first UK Environmental Humanities degree programme, which she now teaches with her colleagues in HaSS-Cornwall. In her teaching she brings her interdisciplinary methods and approaches that are urgently needed for thinking with and beyond the multiple crises of the Anthropocene. She is co-Director of the Centre for Environmental Arts and Humanities. For further information including publications and events see http://www.exeter.ac.uk/esi/research/centreforenvironmentalartsandhumanities/, and Earth Humanities Global Network https://www.earthhumanities.com/, and other related projects including: Time and Tide (with Perranzabuloe Museum, Perranporth) https://news-archive.exeter.ac.uk/cornwall/2018/articles/worktohighlightperranport.html. 

She would be pleased to supervise anyone wishing to research environmental humanities theories and approaches, particularly in relation to the past. She also welcomes interest in the social, landscape and environmental history of the early modern and post-medieval period, including landscape and memory, and the uses of the past in the past, enclosure, customary law, conflict and popular protest, landscape and ecological change, boundaries and boundedness, farming practices, early industry and interactions with the sea. 

 

Research Grants:

Co-lead 

Discipline hopping for environmental solutions 

2022 NERC with Dr Kathryn Moore (CSM) £15,610

 

Co-investigator

Stories of change: exploring energy and community in the past, present and future 

2014-2017 AHRC with Prof. Joe Smith, PI (Geography, Open University) £1.47m

 

Principal applicant

GW4 Environmental Humanities Group 

2014 GW4 Initiator Fund. With Dr Ria Dunkley (Geography, Cardiff), Prof. Peter Coates (History, Bristol) and Prof. Axel Goodbody (Literature, Bath). £5106

 

Co-investigator

Journeys through environmental change: narratives by and for communities

2013 AHRC Project Development Grant. £30,000

 

Co-investigator 2

The past in its place: locating the history of memory in England and Wales

2011-2017 ERC Starting Grant with Prof. Philip Schwyzer, PI (English, Exeter); Prof. Howard Williams CI-1 (Archaeology, Chester); Dr. Joanne Parker (English, Exeter); Dr. Naomi Howell (English, Exeter); Prof. Sarah Hamilton (English, Exeter); Prof. David Harvey (Geography, Exeter) £1 million.

 

Co-Researcher

Early modern discourses of environmental change and sustainability

2010-2011 AHRC Landscape Programme Network Grant £23,995

 

Sole investigator

Landscape, memory and identity in Wales, c.1500-1750 

2008-2010 Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. £41,700