Two researchers from Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) are among leaders of a €10.4 million project to assess the significance of marine resource exploitation over the past 2,000 years.
Archaeology, history and environmental science experts will collaborate in the “4-Oceans” project, funded by the European Research Council.
It has been billed as the “first-ever globalised evaluation” of the role of marine resources on human societies over two millennia.
TCD professor of environmental history Poul Holm and assistant professor of medieval environmental history Francis Ludlow are among a four-strong team of principal investigators.
This project combines expertise in marine environmental history, climate history, natural history, geography, historical ecology and zooarchaeology - spanning the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences.
Working with Prof Holm and Prof Ludlow as project leaders will be University of Cambridge medieval archaeology expert James H Barrett and NOVA University, Lisbon assistant professor Cristina Brito.
Prof Holm said the €10.4 million grant would facilitate “an unparalleled understanding of humanity’s recent interactions with the oceans”.
“Specifically, combining history and archaeology with marine science and socioeconomics, the 4-Oceans team will examine when and where marine exploitation was of significance to human society,”he said.
It would also explore “how major socio-economic, cultural, and environmental forces variously constrained and enabled marine exploitation”.
It would also research “the consequences of marine resource exploitation for societal development”, he said.
His colleague, Prof Ludlow said that “long-term data and an understanding of changes in ecosystems and human behaviour over many centuries is critical to informing the continued development of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Decade for the Oceans”.
So far, the historical dimension has been missing from this, he said, and the 4-Oceans project would “introduce much-needed chronological depth... through the understanding of our past”, he said.
Professors Holm and Ludlow will oversee €5.4 million of the €10.4 million research funding total allocated to 4-Oceans.
So far, TCD researchers have secured 37 European Research Council investigator grants to the value of about 68 million euro during the course of the EU’s Horizon 2020 framework for research and innovation, which is worth nearly €80 billion in total over six years.
TCD Provost Dr Patrick Prendergast welcomed the securing of the latest award.