Dr Paul Warde

Dr Paul Warde is a Reader in Environmental an Economic History at the University of East Anglia. His research focuses on the environmental, economic and social history of early modern and modern Europe, with a focus in particular upon the use of wood as a fundamental resource in pre-industrial society, and forest history; the long-term history of energy use and its relationship with economic development, and environmental and social change; the history of prediction and modeling in thinking about the environment; and the development of institutions for regulating resources and welfare support. In 2008 he was a winner of the Phillip Leverhulme Prize.

He has recently completed books on history of energy use and its relationship with economic growth in Europe between 1500 and the present (with Paolo Malanima and Astrid Kander), and an anthology of documents with commentaries on the emergence of the idea of ‘global change’ and prediction in the environmental sciences (with Sverker Sörlin and Libby Robin). He is currently writing a book on ideas of sustainability in the early modern period; and (with Libby Robin and Sverker Sörlin) a history of the idea of ‘the environment’. Current research projects include work with policy-related studies of landscape change in Catalonia; reconstruction of historical natural capital accounts for the UK; and historical perspectives on fossil fuel exploration in the Arctic.