Evening Lecture: Resilience in Premodern Environmental History

As part of the Summer School, Lee Mordechai (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) will give a public evening lecture at LEIZA entitled Resilience in Premodern Environmental History. The lecture explores how the concept of resilience has evolved and discusses its potential as well as its limitations for understanding premodern societies. Everyone interested is warmly invited to attend.

Monday, 17 August 2026, 6:15 pm
LEIZA Lecture Hall
Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie, Ludwig-Lindenschmit-Forum 1, DE-55116 Mainz

Resilience seems to be everywhere - and its ubiquity is no accident. The term's very flexibility is what makes it attractive to states, institutions and individuals alike, and what lets it mean something different to each. The lecture traces resilience from its origins in ecological discourse, alongside related concepts like the adaptive cycle, stable states and regime shifts, to its present-day popularity across disciplines. As the term spread, it accumulated competing definitions which let it function as a boundary object, travelling between public and scholarly discourses while meaning different things in each. Against this background, the lecture turns to the use of resilience in studying the premodern past over the last decade, asking whether late antique society was "resilient", what might have made it so, and - more fundamentally - whether these are the right questions to ask at all, and what assumptions are smuggled in when we reach for the term.

The lecture will be held in English. Admission is free and all interested members of the public are warmly invited.

About the Summer School

The evening lecture is part of the Summer School "Resilient Humanscapes: Exploring Resiliencies in Human-Spatial Interactions", organised by the Leibniz ScienceCampus RECOMENT (Resiliencies: Comparing and Integrating Methodologies, Methods, Narratives and Theories – Mainz/Trier). The Summer School will take place at LEIZA in Mainz from 17 to 21 August 2026.

→ Further information and the full programme

About the speaker

Lee Mordechai is Senior Lecturer at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on environmental history and the social history of the Byzantine Empire. His work re-examines natural disasters and epidemics in Late Antiquity and investigates how premodern Mediterranean societies responded to short-term environmental stress. He also serves as Associate Director and Co-Principal Investigator of Princeton University's Climate Change and History Research Initiative (CCHRI) and leads several international collaborative projects on climate, environmental and economic history.