Project Collaborations
Collaborations at the heart of HERLAND
HERLAND is built on collaboration. The project brings together historians, digital humanists, and heritage specialists whose expertise helps illuminate how early modern women’s relationship with the natural world. These partnerships are not simply practical—they are part of the story HERLAND seeks to tell: one of landscapes, knowledge, and the people who help us see the past more clearly.
The guidance and knowledge exchanged through these collaborations are central to the project’s work on early modern Northern Europe, especially in building the linguistic and contextual foundations needed to interpret archival material, conduct the neccesary field work, and produce the project's deliverables.
Collaborators
Dr Sari Nauman
Dr Nauman is a specialist in early modern political culture and Scandinavian history. She contributes expertise central to HERLAND’s comparative approach. Her work on governance, belonging, and the lived experiences of early modern communities helps contextualise women’s environmental activities within broader political and social structures. Through discussions, shared research perspectives, and methodological exchange, she supports HERLAND’s efforts to situate women’s interactions with nature within the shifting political landscapes of Sweden and Denmark.
Dr Lars Nyström & Dr Erik Hallberg
Dr Lars Nyström, a specialist in environmental history and historical geography, supports HERLAND by helping contextualise women’s activities within the landscapes, agrarian systems, and ecological conditions of early modern Sweden. His expertise is essential for analysing the data and observations from the field work related to land use, resource management, and environmental regulation, ensuring that HERLAND’s analysis is firmly rooted in regional environmental history.
Dr Erik Hallberg, whose work focuses on harvest practices and agrarian revolutions in early modern Scandinavian history, contributes valuable insights into the economical, political, social, and cultural contexts in which women took part in harvest practices. His experience in developing a database will be instrumental in the development of HERLAND’s database.
Digital Humanities & GRIDH
HERLAND’s digital dimension is made possible through collaboration with Dr Rich Potter in the Department of Historical Studies and the Gothenburg Research Infrastructure in Digital Humanities (GRIDH), led by Dr Jonathan Westin. Potter and GRIDH provides the technological environment and mentorship needed to create HERLAND’s digital outputs: the GIS map, 3D models, and drone documentation of historical landscapes.
Through GRIDH, HERLAND transforms archival and site-based research into immersive digital experiences—allowing visitors, students, and scholars to explore early modern environments in new ways.
Parforcejagtlandskabet i Nordsjælland (UNESCO World Heritage Site)
HERLAND’s fieldwork extends beyond Sweden into Northern Germany and Denmark. In Denmark, the project will collaborate with the Parforcejagtlandskabet i Nordsjælland—the Parforce Hunting Landscape—a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This landscape, designed for royal parforce hunting and a place where royal and noble women hunted, offers a rare opportunity to study how early modern environments were shaped by elite practices, regulations, and ideas about nature connected to women.
The partnership with Parforce Hunting Landscape will consist of knowledge sharing, identification of relevant museum artefacts, field work, and assisting with visual documentation and digital mapping of landscapes in Denmark.The collaboration also plays a role in HERLAND’s public engagement: the project will culminate in a public lecture.