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The forthcoming monograph Historical Biodiversity in the Alps: Grassland Agroecosystems in the Last Millennium (Žiga Zwitter, Leonid Rasran, 2025) will be presented. It combines micro- and macro-historical approaches and is the result of a multi-year interdisciplinary cooperation between an environmental historian and a botanist. The focus of the presentation is on the history of grassland management in usual and exceptional historical situations and its environmental effects in the broader context of dynamic environmental conditions. The lecture presents the results of studies of different types of sources: administrative records, works of historical experts, museum artefacts, Sunday Christ Gothic church murals, oral history interviews, and fieldwork. Interdisciplinary insights deepened the knowledge of the role of the Eastern Alps in the European Levantine trade of the late Middle Ages and the modern period, and of its environmental impacts in grasslands. The final part of the presentation discusses the relevance of the historical data presented in the 21st century, when species-rich grasslands are being rapidly lost.
Žiga Zwitter (born 1987), holds a BA in history and geography, and a PhD in history (2015). He is an assistant professor of early modern history and a researcher in the Department of History at the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Arts. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at Vienna’s Institute of Social Ecology (2016–17), a visiting professor at the University of Innsbruck (2024), regional representative for Croatia–Serbia– Slovenia in the European Society for Environmental History (since 2019), and a vice-president of the Historical Association of Slovenia (since 2021).