Projects per year
Personal profile
Research interests
Email: m.dudley@bristol.ac.uk
Twitter: @DudleyMarianna
I am an environmental historian of modern Britain. My work explores environmental change and its impacts on communities, places, and politics. My current research examines wind and wave power, and the rise of renewable energy technologies more broadly, in the twentieth century. I approach this topic from an environmental history perspective, wondering whether winds and waves can be forces of history as well as of nature. My article ‘Limits of Power: Wind Energy, Orkney and the post-war British state’ shows that there was state interest in wind energy immediately after the Second World War, when it was seen to be a solution for connecting remote communities to electricity in the new welfare state.
I am also interested in water as a site, agent and archive of history. Work on rivers and their inhabitants, including the surfers of the Severn Bore, explores the interconnected flows of identity, memory, and place in watery settings.
The subject which started me down an academic career path was the rise of environmentalism within the British military. I was doctoral student on the ‘Militarized Landscapes in Britain, France and US’ project and examined five British training areas in the south west and Wales. My thesis identified the rise of military environmentalism as a land management practice developed by the Ministry of Defence. This work was published as a book, An Environmental History of the UK Defence Estate, 1945-present in 2012.
I am co-director of the University of Bristol Centre for Environmental Humanities.
Teaching
I teach a range of units in the Department of History at undergraduate and postgraduate level, including:
The Age of the Human
Beyond the Battlefield: Environment and Conflict (available to School of Humanities students)
Environment and History
The Modern World
War and Society
Wild Things: Humans and Other Animals in the Modern World
Research supervision
Current PhD student: Austin Read (Geography), 'Decolonising Environmental Politics: the Atlantic Salmon as a Boundary Object' (co-supervised with Naomi Millner and Mark Jackson).
I have co-supervised MPhil and DPhil students working, respectively, on the history of whale strandings in Europe and the history of tidal technology in the Severn Estuary. I welcome postgraduate research proposals on the environmental history of modern Britain, including (but certainly not limited to) matters of energy and infrastructure, rivers, and military environments.
Structured keywords and research groupings
- Cabot Institute Low Carbon Energy Research
- Cabot Institute Water Research
- Cabot Institute Environmental Change Research
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Network
Projects
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MedEnv: Intersections of Medical and Environmental Humanities
Dudley, M. R., Bates, V. L., Pearson, C. & Hickman, C.
1/09/19 → 1/09/21
Project: Research
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Research output
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Creative Dislocation: an Experiment in Collaborative Historical Research
Pooley, W. G., McLellan, J., Hanna, E., Dudley, M., Cole, T., Williamson, B. & Bickers, R., 20 Sep 2020, In: History Workshop Journal. 25 p., dbaa030.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review
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An excursion in the environmental humanities: some thoughts on fieldwork, collaboration, and disciplinary identity following a day trip to the Island of Lundy
Howkins, A., Dudley, M., Coates, P., Badcoe, T., Brice, S., Flack, A., Haines, D., Merchant, P., Publicover, L., Stone, R. & Would, A., 17 Mar 2019, In: Green Letters. 23, 1, p. 39-53 15 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review
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The Limits of Power: Wind Energy, Orkney and the Post-War British State
Dudley, M., 3 Aug 2019, In: Twentieth Century British History. 31, 3, p. 316-339 24 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review
Activities
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MedEnv workshop 1: Animals
Victoria L Bates (Member of programme committee), Marianna R Dudley (Member of programme committee), Clare Hickman (Member of programme committee) & Chris Pearson (Organiser)
17 Jan 2020Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in workshop, seminar, course
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Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities lecture. 'Limits of Power: Wind energy, Orkney and the postwar British State'
Marianna R Dudley (Speaker)
30 Nov 2018Activity: Talk or presentation types › Public talk, debate, discussion
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Interview with BBC Radio Orkney
Marianna R Dudley (Speaker)
28 Nov 2018Activity: Other activity types › Media coverage or participation