ICHG-2015-Programme-Book

Delegates are warmly invited to attend the first British Academy Geography Lecture,
taking place on Tuesday 7 July, 18.00-19.30 in the Ondaatje Theatre, RGS-IBG. The
session will be chaired by Professor Felix Driver, Chair of the ICHG, and will be
followed by a drinks reception sponsored by the British Academy.
Who reads geography or history anymore? The challenge of
audience in a digital age [session 81]
William Cronon (University of Wisconsin, USA)
The disciplines of history and geography favour quite different rhetorical venues for
communicating their research findings. Geography long ago joined the rest of the
sciences in preferring peer-reviewed journal articles as its principal mode of
professional communication, whereas history is one of the last remaining disciplines
still committed primarily to the book-length monograph. Neither format seems ideally
suited to the increasingly dominant rhetorical media created by the digital revolution.
How might geographers and historians best respond to the challenge of reaching
academic and non-academic audiences in the 21st century?