Dr. Anna Varga, Visiting Fellowship 2023/24

Biography

Dr.Anna Varga is a biologist and forest pedagogist who works in environmental humanities. Her research explores questions of environmental history, ethnobiology, charocoal production silvopastoral systems, environmental education, and (re)connection with nature.

She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pécs (2018). Her latest research focuses on forest and pastures enclosures during the 19th century and its impact on the socio-ecological systems. Currently, she works on environmental history and traditional knowledge of charcoal burning and the children roles in traditional land use managements.

Anna has been involved in several international agroforestry research initiatives (in recent years and was a Carson Fellow (2019-2020) and Landhaus Fellow (2023) at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich. She is the leader of the Environmental History Working Group CA22155 – Network for forest by-products charcoal, resin, tar, potash (EU-PoTaRCh).

She has demonstrated the role of traditional knowledge in wood pasture management and validated the importance and practice of forest grazing in Central and Eastern Europe. Her work was one of the main influences on the forest grazing issue in Hungarian forest policy, enabling successful advocacy for changes in the most recent Forest Law (2017). She has an active role in scientific organizations (SCB, ISE, ICCAs, IPBES), communication, and teaching.

Visiting fellowship August 2024

Motivation

The goals of my Visiting Fellowship are (1,) to develop collaboration on future research on the environmental – forest history of Central and Eastern Europe; secondly (2,) to discuss and compare the visual source material of PoTaRCH (potash, tar, resin, charcoal production) from Slovenia and Hungary; thirdly (3,) to start to prepare of a workshop in Slovenia in Spring 2025 for the  Working Group 4 – Environmental History of CA22155 – Network for forest by-products charcoal, resin, tar, potash (EU-PoTaRCh).

Publications

Varga, A (2021) Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Land Use Changes of the Puszta Agricultural Estates in the Works of Two Hungarian Writers: Gyula Illyés and Evin Lázár In: Ivánek, J. & Malura, J. (eds.): Portraying countryside in Central European Literature. 409-424.

Varga, A, Demeter, L, Öllerer, K, Ulicsni, V, Biró, M, Babai, D, Molnár, Zs (2021) Prohibited, but still present: Local and traditional knowledge about the practice and impact of forest grazing by domestic livestock in Hungary. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine.16:1-12. 

Varga, A (2017) ‘Innovation from the Past.’ Silvopastoral Systems in Hungary in the Light of Hungarian Ethnographic Literature. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 62:135-162.

Varga, A, Molnár, Zs, Biró, M, Demeter, L, Gellény, K, Miókovics, E, Molnár, Á, Molnár, K, Ujházy, N, Ulicsni, V, Babai, D. (2016) Changing year-round habitat use of extensively grazing cattle, sheep and pigs in East-Central Europe between 1940 and 2014: Consequences for conservation and policy. Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment. 234:142–153.