Human-Bug Encounters in Multispecies Networks (Brill's the History of the Environment)

While providing a basis for all ecosystems, bugs such as insects and arachnids also destroy crops and indirectly kill humans and other animals by the millions. This book illuminates the many ways in which human lives affect and are affected by bugs as part of a wider network of species. 14 chapters reveal how knowledge, ideas, and emotions related to bugs are historically and culturally formed. With many bug populations in free fall, how can humans and bugs coexist? This book examines this question and offers a new ethics for this coexistence.

Contributors are Michaela Fenske, Minna Santaoja, Concepción Cortés Zulueta, Heidi Mikkola, Laura Hollsten, Sophie FitzMaurice, Otto Latva, Marianne Mäkelin, Taina Syrjämaa, Suvi Rytty, Sanna Lillbroända-Annala, Emily Webster, Karine Aasgaard Jansen, Heta Lähdesmäki, and Tuomas Räsänen.

Laura Hollsten, Ph.D. (2005), Åbo Akademi University, Finland, is a researcher specialised in environmental history at that university. Her research interests include human-animal studies, early modern environmental history, the history of knowledge and science, and global history.

Otto Latva, Ph.D. (2019), University of Turku, Finland, is a historian focusing on human-animal and human-plant studies as well as environmental history. Latva is the author of the monograph The Giant Squid in Transatlantic Culture: The Monsterization of Molluscs (2023).

Sanna Lillbroända-Annala, Ph.D. (2010), Åbo Akademi University, Finland, is an ethnologist and senior lecturer at that university. She has conducted research in urban environments from the perspective of gentrification and cultural heritage, lately with special interest towards non-humans in urban settings.

Suvi Rytty, Ph.D. (2021), University of Turku, Finland, is a postdoctoral researcher specializing in the history of medicine and health. Her research interests include the history of the natural way of life, alternative medicine, vegetarianism and anti-vaccinationism.

Tuomas Räsänen, Ph.D. (2015), University of Turku, Finland, is a Professor of environmental history at the University of Eastern Finland. He has studied the history of human-wildlife relationships and marine environmental history. He has been leading the research project Humans and Ticks in the Anthropocene.