معرفی
Alex Hibberts is an environmental historian specializing in medieval and early modern European history before 1800. He currently holds multiple prestigious fellowships: Honorary Fellow in the Department of History at Durham University (since 2025), Pearsall Fellow in Naval and Maritime History at the University of London's Institute of Historical Research (2024-25), and visiting fellow at the University of Bern (2025). His academic journey began at Durham University where he completed his BA (Hons) in History (2016-2020), including an Erasmus year at Uppsala University.
Hibberts' research focuses on reconstructing weather and climate before 1800, with particular expertise in the complex inter-relationships between social, economic and environmental change in late medieval and early modern Britain. His doctoral thesis explored risk management in marginal coastal landscapes during the Little Ice Age in Britain, investigating governance of fragile ecosystems and the socio-environmental impacts of weather events. He has demonstrated how floods and storm surges were sometimes exaggerated or fabricated to justify resource reallocation.
His current work involves analyzing early modern English weather diaries containing some of the earliest globally available instrumental data, expanding geographical and temporal scope of past weather reconstruction. Hibberts is particularly known for his interdisciplinary approach, collaborating with archaeologists, geologists, historical climatologists, physical geographers, and climate scientists. His most recent publication, 'The Future of (Environmental) History: A Roundtable Discussion' (2025), represents collaborative work with scholars from nine different disciplines.
Hibberts has also engaged with non-academic stakeholders, notably co-leading a 2024 project with Northumberland National Park exploring how creative methods can inform landscape policy, funded by Durham's Institute of Advanced Study. His research demonstrates a strong commitment to bridging academic and practical applications of historical environmental knowledge.
