Mining waste—piles of toxic rock, heavy metals seeping into rivers, and landscapes scarred by centuries of extraction—is being reframed as heritage rather than simply contamination. The project focuses on the Harz Mountains in Germany and Cornwall in England, both UNESCO World Heritage Sites, to show that the environmental damage from mining is not a separate problem but an integral part of the story. Most research on mining history stops at the 19th century and emphasises technological progress; this project reaches back to the late medieval period and takes an ecological perspective instead. By combining historical research, ethnographic fieldwork, digital mapping, and creative practice, the team will produce a public touring exhibition and GIS-based visualisations that make toxic residues tangible for local communities. If successful, the work could reshape how heritage organisations, policymakers, and the public understand industrial landscapes—not as clean monuments to human ingenuity, but as socio-natural entities where pollution and identity are permanently intertwined. This is primarily a conceptual shift in heritage studies, with no immediate practical application, but similar fundamental reframings have changed how societies manage post-industrial land.
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"Toxic Heritage" considers mining landscapes as tangible evidence of the profound human-induced transformations that have taken place over centuries in these subterranean and surface worlds. The far-reaching environmental consequences of mining have so far been neglected in its heritage narratives, overshadowed by stories of technological progress and economic development. The project will shift this focus by presenting toxic residues as an integral aspect of mining, constituting a demanding legacy that has influenced centuries of human-nature interactions. It will do so by developing an interdisciplinary, cutting-edge conceptualization of mining heritage that is underpinned by an ecological standpoint. Unlike previous iterations, this framing will be able to encompass the fundamental dynamics and interactions that have generated the multiple crises of the Anthropocene, humanity's geological epoch. The Harz Mountains in Central Germany and Cornwall in Southwest England, both inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites in recognition of their extensive mining history, are the focus of this proposed project. Utilising a combination of historical research, ethnographic fieldwork, digital mapping and modelling, creative practice, and curatorial practice, the project team will explore and communicate the significant and far reaching environmental and social impacts of mining in these landscapes since the late medieval period. It will also unpack how these legacies continue to shape present-day identities and ecologies across both regions. The historical depth of our study, which extends from the pre-industrial period to the present, addresses an important research desideratum, as most research in historical, environmental and Anthropocene studies considering the environmental impacts of mining hardly look back beyond 19th century developments and practices. In contrast to the extensive body of work on mining history that concentrates on economic and technological aspects, the proposed project adopts a holistic perspective towards mining landscapes, their resources, and their material residues. We perceive mining landscapes as socio-natural entities consisting of intersecting material, social and symbolic dimensions, a viewpoint that admits a comprehensive, non-teleological view of mining as heritage. Consequently, the project challenges dualistic understandings of nature and culture and so can explore more fully intersections between social, economic, and political systems, and the biophysical systems of the planet. In this respect, the project aligns with other cutting-edge approaches that, in response to the challenges of the Anthropocene, attempt to explore and develop non-binary and more-than-human methods of research in international cooperation. The proposed project is using an interdisciplinary set of methods and will inform both academic and broader publics. We will employ ethnographic and archival research across the four study sites in combination with a digital GIS based database that will visualise and model the research data. Concurrent activities include the production of creative interventions, public engagement events with local stakeholders and the development of a public-facing touring exhibition that will make mining residues and toxic heritage tangible for local communities. The project will disseminate its research through academic publications and by establishing a public web presence supported by regular blog posts and GIS StoryMaps introducing the project's findings. By combining scientific, cultural, and artistic perspectives, the project seeks to emphasise the results of embracing a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of heritage, one that acknowledges the intertwined relationships between humans and the environment in a longue-durée perspective.
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