Undoing the discipline:History in the time of climate crisis and COVID-19

COVID-19 gives a fresh urgency to researchtrajectories around climate and environment in historicalresearch. We use examples from African, Japanese, andmedieval European environmental history to chart new waysto mobilise collaborative research into the planetary past inacademic and public discussions. Our main points are, first,that COVID-19 has underlined the entanglements betweenhuman and planetary life, which historians must betteraccount for. Secondly, it is pertinent to decentre knowledgeproduction. COVID-19 and climate crisis are both globalphenomena. Yet patterns of knowledge production thatpropose ‘universal’ frameworks and solutions obscure highlyunequal power relations. We call for more plural histories –in time, space, and species – to confront the complex crisesof our times