Péter Szabó works at the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Brno, Czech Republic. He holds MA degrees in history, English, and medieval studies and completed his PhD in medieval studies at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His research interests lie in the long-term interactions between human societies and wooded environments, with a special focus on what historical knowledge can contribute to today’s nature conservation. His publications cover issues ranging from prehistoric forest dynamics through medieval woodland management to the use of large databases in history. In 2012–2016, he led an interdisciplinary team in the LONGWOOD project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC). Because his works rely heavily on crossing the “great divide” between the humanities and the natural sciences, he has also published extensively on the conceptual aspects of connecting history and ecology. Péter serves on the editorial board of Global Environment as well as on the editorial advisory committee of Environment and History. In 2017–2019, he served as president of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH).
RCC Research Project: A New Woodland History for Europe
Selected Publications:
- with Silvie Suchánková, Lucie Křížová, Martin Kotačka, Martina Kvardová, Martin Macek, Jana Müllerová, and Rudolf Brázdil. “More Than Trees: The Challenges of Creating a Geodatabase to Capture the Complexity of Forest History.” Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History 51 (2018): 175–89.
- “Historical Ecology: Past, Present, and Future.” Biological Reviews 90 (2015): 997–1014.
- with Jana Müllerová, Silvie Suchánková, and Martin Kotačka. “Intensive Woodland Management in the Middle Ages: Spatial Modelling Based on Archival Data.” Journal of Historical Geography 48 (2015): 1–10.
- “The End of Common Uses and Traditional Management in a Central European Wood.” In Cultural Severance and the Environment: The Ending of Traditional and Customary Practice on Commons and Landscapes Managed in Common, edited by Ian D. Rotherham, 205–13. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013.
- Woodland and Forests in Medieval Hungary. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2005.