Reply To: 9. Sep 22nd – Mentorship in environmental history: case studies

Author	Replies

Miguel Núñez	# Posted on October 1, 2015 at 08:21
	I think that the shared experiences which we had had in the running of the mentorship with undergraduate students, were useful for the enrichment in the scope of the global environmental history, not only by the great interest that they showed on environmental themes as well as their focus on going deeply in the history and picking up relevant data in the comprehension of the past phenomena. Often, I was maintained myself marvelled, with the constancy that they manifested toward themes that I have considered as “old fashion”, for instance the one million of times named encounter between American and European worlds in the XV century, as well as the massive dying which occurred before in Euro-Asia, during XIV century by the “black death” pandemics. The two groups which studied diseases had two divergent focus, one of them I think, wanted to know with details, from a narrative approach, about what happened during massive dyings, and the other was so interested in reveal the mechanisms used to challenge those pandemics by sanitary measures as for example the quarantines or healthy belts. From my own approach, I interpreted it as two necessary steps in the processes of investigation, the first one, I will say, the theory requirement, and the second, the practice. Or in other words, if you are interested in the history, first your efforts try to know what happened and after, they look for a comprehension about the mechanisms which gave impulse to the history wheel. The experience of sharing common interests around a same discipline between persons with differentiated levels of “expertise”, made in my mind a micro-revolution by knowing that the historic concern goes beyond of naïve interests. I mean that I felt myself as part of a community, at least as part of an academic community.

Author

Replies

Miguel Núñez

# Posted on October 1, 2015 at 08:21

I think that the shared experiences which we had had in the running of the mentorship with undergraduate students, were useful for the enrichment in the scope of the global environmental history, not only by the great interest that they showed on environmental themes as well as their focus on going deeply in the history and picking up relevant data in the comprehension of the past phenomena.

Often, I was maintained myself marvelled, with the constancy that they manifested toward themes that I have considered as “old fashion”, for instance the one million of times named encounter between American and European worlds in the XV century, as well as the massive dying which occurred before in Euro-Asia, during XIV century by the “black death” pandemics.

The two groups which studied diseases had two divergent focus, one of them I think, wanted to know with details, from a narrative approach, about what happened during massive dyings, and the other was so interested in reveal the mechanisms used to challenge those pandemics by sanitary measures as for example the quarantines or healthy belts.

From my own approach, I interpreted it as two necessary steps in the processes of investigation, the first one, I will say, the theory requirement, and the second, the practice. Or in other words, if you are interested in the history, first your efforts try to know what happened and after, they look for a comprehension about the mechanisms which gave impulse to the history wheel. The experience of sharing common interests around a same discipline between persons with differentiated levels of “expertise”, made in my mind a micro-revolution by knowing that the historic concern goes beyond of naïve interests. I mean that I felt myself as part of a community, at least as part of an academic community.