The AMU Research Centre of Energy and Environmental Challenges is pleased to announce an open lecture by Monica Vasile (University of Oulu) which will take place on Tuesday, 3 March at 9:30 in the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnology on the Morasko Campus.
This talk traces my path through interdisciplinary research across environmental history, anthropology, and conservation science. I moved from forest ethnography to work on human–bison coexistence in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains and then to historical analysis of conservation practice across the globe. Along the way, my questions and methods changed. In the talk I reveal interdisciplinarity as practice shaped by concrete problems, learned in the field, in archives, and through collaboration with scientists and communities. I also address its limits. I show how working across worlds broadens perspective but rarely grants full belonging. It demands constant translation, negotiation of authority, and occasional compromise. Credibility does not transfer automatically, and the labour often multiplies. Crossing fields means reading wider literatures and juggling vocabularies while recognition might lag behind.
Monica Vasile is an environmental historian and anthropologist. Her research looks at how societies intervene in nature, from forestry to endangered species recovery, rewilding and ecosystem restoration. She currently leads transdisciplinary exchanges at the University of Oulu.
The lecture is part of the Pathways to Interdisciplinarity series and is funded by the Research Centre for Energy and Environmental Challenges.
