At AREA Ruhr we are happy to announce that the fourth volume in the AREA Ruhr Working Papers series has just been published. In this edited transcript of a roundtable discussion on “Perspectives on the State and Future of Environmental History in Japan and Germany” Watanabe Kōichi, Fujihara Tatsushi, Frank Uekötter and Tina Asmussen reflect on the current state and future prospects of the field, exchanging perspectives on past and present debates, and addressing questions of political activism, future directions, and interdisciplinarity.
The workshop was held at the German Mining Museum in Bochum in late September 2025 and hosted by AREA Ruhr members Mariko Jacoby and Katja Schmidtpott who are the editors of this fourth AREA Ruhr Working Paper. The publication is also partly result of the visit of Fujihara Tatsushi as International Research Fellow on an AREA Ruhr scholarship to Bochum and Duisburg in the summer/autumn of 2024.
Volume 4 (2025)
Perspectives on the State and Future of Environmental History in Japan and Germany: Roundtable Discussion
Asmussen, Tina / Fujihara, Tatsushi / Uekötter, Frank / Watanabe, Kōichi