Inverting Exoticism: How Rabbits Colonised the Low Countries (1250-1700)

The Environmental Heritage & The Environmental Humanities Network, RAS Research Groups within Sustainable Landscapes & Regions, invite you to a lecture on 6 October 2025 by Jim van der Meulen (Huygens Instituut)!

This lecture traces how the European rabbit, introduced to the Low Countries from 1250, escaped human-controlled spaces to disrupt peasant livelihoods and colonise the landscape. Using a local map drawn in 1640, we ask how a formerly alien species became naturalised and established itself in the wild, and what this reveals about categories such as wild, natural, and invasive in the archaeology of the Anthropocene.

If you are interested in joining online, you can follow this google meet particiaption link: https://meet.google.com/bwp-kkju-rkn