Amanda Power

Amanda Power is an historian of religion, power and intellectual life in medieval Europe. I have been involved in developing the field of global medieval history, and new approaches to historical study that speak to the concerns of the mounting climate and environmental crisis. I am currently working on a monograph, Medieval Histories of the Anthropocene, which explores questions concerning the relations between religion, power and the construction of public rationality in the building of medieval states across Eurasia. I am interested in how these centralising processes consciously dislocated humans from local ecosystems and specific and sustainable practices, while creating powerful and enduring narratives about civilisation, barbarism, and the use of resources. A related, partly collaborative, series of projects ask about the purposes and the future of our discipline, and of Humanities and Social Sciences more generally, in the politically, economically and ecologically unstable period that we are now entering.

For some of my work on the importance of new historical understandings in bringing about the necessary social transformations to address climate change and environmental damage, see here [https://theconversation.com/climate-change-narrate-a-history-beyond-the-triumph-of-humanity-to-find-imaginative-solutions-109819].

Faculty page: https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-amanda-power

Climate Crisis Thinking in the Humanities and Social Sciences