Glasgow and the western Lowlands in 1816: COP26

Glasgow had a turbulent time – not only owing to the Tambora eruption. Scottish soldiers had fought as well in the Napoleonic Wars. There had been social unrest in Glasgow as everywhere in the United Kingdom.


Video presentation (and transcript), part of Mixed media student presentation to COP 26 United Nations Climate Conferenc. Research was organised by students at the Univeristy of Glasgow and the University of Mainz. Presentation postponed due to the visit of President Obama to the venue.


Involving the development of a webpage that will be shown on a touchscreen in the exhibition surrounding the COP26 conference in Glasgow (https://ukcop26.org). The webpage will be part of a bigger exhibition that is being prepared now by researchers and students in Mainz (Germany) and Glasgow - and which will shed light on the climate catastrophe of 1816 from very different points of view and from different humanities and sciences that all concentrate on Tambora and the Year without Summer. Our part, the webpage, will compare the impact of that year on local communities and societies in Mainz and Glasgow (and around them). We intend to concentrate on the vulnerability and the resilience of these local communities. To that end we try to understand the structural conditions of these communities (agricultural production versus port city, e.g.) and the way people try to understand what is happening around them. One year later, in 2022, this webpage is going to be shown in Mainz on the annual conference of the German Association for the Study of English.