Welcome
It is a great pleasure to announce that Rural History 2019, the fourth biennial conference of the European Rural History Organisation (EURHO), will take in Paris from Tuesday 10 to Friday 13 September 2019. This meeting will be organised by the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), through the Centre de Recherches Historiques (CRH), in collaboration with the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), the FMSH (Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme) and the EPHE (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes).
The Eurho Conferences are international, multidisciplinary meetings intended for all European and other researchers applying comparative approaches. They aim to promote a dialogue between rural history researchers which aims to surpass national frontiers, cross chronological barriers and break down disciplinary boundaries. They welcome all and any topics, that bring new insights to the historical study of the problems faced by rural society. These range from the economic and social history of the countryside (agricultural or preindustrial production, social reproduction, consumption, material culture, village life, technology, tourism and so on) to connections with environmental, political, anthropological and cultural history — and beyond these, with the preoccupations of geography, sociology, economy, archeology, agronomy, biology and zoology. They deal with subjects such as supply, power relations, gender, social well-being, and technological and scientific improvements in the historical framework of agriculture and of rural society and the relationship between city and countryside.
The success of the EURHO conferences – the inaugural meeting in Brighton (2010) and the conferences in Bern (2013), Girona (2015) and Leuven (2017) – have proved EURHO ‘s usefulness as a means to effectively promote the history of the countryside. The Paris Conference will be open to all proposals employing new methods or yielding new results across a wide range of themes, time periods and spatial boundaries. We encourage all scholars and researchers to submit their work and to answer the call for papers which will be issued this coming May.
I will be delighted, on behalf of the EHESS, to welcome to Paris all participants who want to bring their knowledge and experience to this event. The Paris EURHO meeting is bound to be a fruitful means of encouraging further productive rural history research in an international framework. To help make this international event a resounding success, I ask all researchers interested in these topics to set aside now the four days from 10 to 13 September 2019, and to submit their proposals as soon as the call for panels will be launched on the 18th of may.
Gérard Béaur
Chair of the Scientific Committee
