Robert Hearn

Assistant Professor in Human Geography, University of Nottingham
I am currently an Assistant Professor in Human Geography at the University of Nottingham, where I undertook my BA(Hons) History (2005), MA in Environmental History (2007) and PhD (2013), the latter of which was co-supervised by the Department of History (Dr Ross Balzaretti) and School of Geography (Professor Charles Watkins). Inspired by a field course to Italy during my MA, my subsequent PhD explored the comparative cultural and historical animal geographies and cultural-environmental species histories of wolves and wild boar in in the NW Italian region of Liguria. This interdisciplinary thesis drew on a wide range of sources and methodologies, from archaeology to zoology, from archival research to oral history and participant observation. Research into the return of native but historically absent species and the relationships between these and spontaneous rewilding processes lay at the heart of this thesis.

Following my PhD, I was the Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Laboratorio di Archeologia e Storia Ambientale (LASA) a group comprised of academics and researchers from the Dipartimento di Antichità, Filosofia e Storia (DAFIST) and the Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra dell'Ambiente e della Vita (DISTAV) at the Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy. During this two-year post, I undertook a number of individual projects relating the Italian animal geographies and group projects relating to the Ligurian landscape. After Genova, I returned to Nottingham as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Advanced Studies working on a project funded by the AHRC. This post was immediately followed by a three-month British Academy Rome Award at the British School at Rome where I worked on the animal geographies of the Roman Campagna during the 19th century.

Returning to Genova after Rome, since September 2016 I have taught in the School of Geography at Nottingham. Alongside teaching on a wide range of courses and subject matter, I am currently working on an edited collection with a Professor Roberta Cevasco at the Università degli Studi di Scienze Gastronomiche concerning the cultural-historical geographies and environmental histories of ‘traditional’ food and foodways in Europe, in addition to continuing my research and writing concerning animal and more-than-human geographies and species histories in Italy, albeit with a view to undertaking explorations concerning the comparative perceptions, attitudes and responses to animals and rewilding in northern Europe, specifically Scandinavia; an area that the wild boar is rapidly recolonising.