Brett Bennett

Brett Bennett is Senior Lecturer in History in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. He is also a Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg and an Associate in the Centre for Environmental History at The Australian National University.

International Review of Environmental History: Volume 9, Issue 1, 2023 »

Edited by: James Beattie
Publication date: July 2023
Inspired by recent scholarship on disaster history and situated within the broader field of environmental history, this special issue highlights structural factors that have exacerbated the effects of extreme weather and explores how states and societies have responded and adapted (or not) during and after disasters. The five case studies all focus on the Indian Ocean World (IOW), a macro-region stretching from eastern Africa to East Asia and Southeast Asia…

International Review of Environmental History: Volume 8, Issue 2, 2022 »

Edited by: James Beattie, Brett Bennett
Publication date: December 2022
The latest issue of the International Review of Environmental History ranges widely and deeply across several topics, periods and continents. The first part contains six articles, on environmental history teaching; ancient populations and plague; European geographical knowledge of India; environment, architecture and design; introduced ship-borne rats and mice; and environmental change on sub-Antarctic islands. The second part is a special-issue…
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International Review of Environmental History: Volume 8, Issue 1, 2022 »

Edited by: James Beattie, Brett Bennett
Publication date: March 2022
This timely special issue of the International Review of Environmental History focuses on animals and epidemics in modern East Asia. The global pandemic of Covid-19 has forced us to think more deeply about the interrelations between animals, both human and non-human, and epidemics. Moreover, the intense attention on East Asia in this context demands that we study the region in the thematic matrix of health, environment, animals, sociocultural traditions, and…
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Forestry and Water Conservation in South Africa »

History, Science and Policy

Publication date: November 2015
This innovative interdisciplinary study focuses on the history, science, and policy of tree planting and water conservation in South Africa. South Africa’s forestry sector has sat—often controversially—at the crossroads of policy and scientific debates regarding water conservation, economic development, and biodiversity protection. Bennett and Kruger show how debates about the hydrological impact of exotic tree planting in South Africa shaped the…