Early encounters with coal: Retrieving views from below

This project started with a workshop held at the department of the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, on 13-14 December 2012. Historians who contributed with papers to the workshop asked how the histories of those who dug, wrought, fired and laboured for coal and steam energy can be enriched by multiple interdisciplinary perspectives of - inter alia - environmental history, science and technology studies, history of technology and energy history, economic geology, anthropology, ecocriticism, colonial/empire history, rural change and industrialisation, energy humanities, maritime history. I contributed with a paper on the cultural history of steam technology in Egypt, and is on the editorial team taking the workshop's output forward to publication in an edited volume, expected to be published in 2024.