PhD Course in ‘Environment, Expertise and Development’ at University of Copenhagen Between August 11th and 14th the scholars Arun Agrawal, Jesse Ribot and Andrea Nightingale visited Department of Food and Resource Economics for a PhD course arranged by Professor Christian Lund and Associate Professor Jens Friis Lund. Marie and Annemiek participated. Taking a point of […]
REAL participates at YorNight outreach event in York, UK
YorNight at the University of York Date: 26 September 2014 Time: 4 pm – 9 pm Location: St Martin’s Church, York, United Kingdom REAL members alongside University of York archaeologists Louise Iles and Daryl Stump and members of the The Archaeology of Agricultural Resilience in Eastern Africa (AAREA) project, researchers from the Environment Department; Phil Platts and […]
International Swiss Climate Summer School
13th International Swiss Climate Summer School “Linking Land Use, Land Cover, and Climate” 31 August – 5 September 2014, Grindelwald, Switzerland Scope The 13th International Swiss Climate Summer School was focused on the theme “Linking land use, land cover, and climate”. This theme had been chosen due to its paramount importance in terms of both […]
British Ecological Society – Tropical Ecosystems Group August 14-15, 2014
BES-TEG aimed at promoting and facilitating communication and interaction between tropical ecologists to enable inter-disciplinary transfer and development of knowledge and skills; and provides support for early career researchers while filling-in policy gaps. After six successful Early Career Research Meetings, BES-TEG are organizing a 7th meeting schedule to take place at the University of York, […]
PAA/SAfA Conference 2014
The REAL project was well represented at the jointly held 14th Congress of the Pan African Archaeological Association for Prehistory and Related Studies and the 22nd Biennial Meeting of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists which took place 14th-18th of July at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Nik Petek presented on Gifts, Feasts, and Social […]
Theory and Practice of Stable Light Isotope Mass Spectrometry
Stable isotope analysis has a huge range of applications including understanding the food histories and lifeways of past peoples and the animals they shared their landscapes with. I hope to use the ratio of naturally occurring stable isotopes (δ13C, δ15N, 18O / 16O and 87Sr, 88Sr) to evaluate whether historic and contemporary patterns observed in livestock and pastoral mobility […]
Phytolith Training Workshop – University of Cape Town
During the week of June 30th – July 4th 2014, Anna Shoemaker and Nik Petek had the opportunity to participate in a Phytolith Training Workshop at the University of Cape Town led by Professor Carlos Cordova of the Department of Geography, Oklahoma State University. The workshop was hosted by Professor Michael Meadows, Department of Environmental […]
Identification help: Freshwater bryozoa statoblast from East Africa
Identified! This is a statoblast of the species Lophopodella capensis or possibly Lophopodella stuhlmani. Some information on the distribution of this freshwater bryozoa can be found here. Bryozoa statoblasts like these were found in the late Holocene sediments of Nyabuiyabui Swamp, a freshwater swamp on the Mau Escarpment in Kenya, at 2900 m asl. If it is […]
Collecting historical data in Rhodes House and the National Archives
Studying archival sources can be a way to triangulate and contextualise a social science study of social-ecological relations in Kenya. One can study Kenya’s recent past by examining colonial district records of the times of the British colonial involvement in Kenya – mostly from the 1910s to the 1970s. Such files and reports are available […]
Fieldwork at Lakes Baringo and Bogoria, July 2014
The REAL ESRs from Ghent University carried out field work in Lakes Baringo and Bogoria in the Kenyan rift valley in July. Together with Prof. Dirk Verschuren, ESRs Geert van der Plas and Aynalem Degefa and other members of the Limnology Unit at Ghent University (Gijs de Cort and Yoeri Torsi), were involved in the […]
Sediment analyses at Aberystwyth University
By: Colin Courtney Mustaphi and Esther Githumbi July 16, 2014 X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) is a technique that yields detailed information on the geochemistry of sediment cores and can be useful for characterising depositional environments and for palaeoenvironmental interpretations. The XRF analysis was performed at the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth University in Wales, UK, […]
Generic Political Map of East Africa
Here is a generic map of East Africa made by Nick Deere from KITE (University of York) that can be used as a study aid to label and take notes on. [TIF file] [JPG file]