Prof. Dr. Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist

CV

Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist is a historian and palaeoclimatologist at Stockholm University. He is since 2022 Professor of History, especially Historical Geography, at Stockholm University. Ljungqvist is also Associate Professor of Physical Geography, Stockholm University, and Pro Futura Scientia Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala. He started his academic career as a medieval historian, but has increasingly conducted research within palaeoclimatology (climate history), using mainly natural “proxy” archives (tree-ring data etc.) to reconstruct and understand temperature and hydroclimate variability during the past two millennia, as well as to study climatic impacts on human history. His current research interests range from the link between past climate variability and historical harvest yields, the effect of plague outbreaks on the history of European building activity, the efficiency and integration of the early modern European grain market, to socio-political aspects of historical food (in)security. The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities awarded Ljungqvist the Rettig Prize 2022 for his “interdisciplinary work concerning climate and disease in a long-term perspective that demonstrate the importance of humanistic and historical perspectives on crucial contemporary issues”. Ljungqvist is an experienced university  teacher and is also actively engaged in popular science and public outreach activities. He is the author of four popular science books – for the first two of which he was awarded the Clio Prize in 2016 – and frequently gives popular science lectures and makes  contributions to media.

Publikationen (Auswahl)

• Ljungqvist, F.C., Thejll, P., Christiansen, B., Seim, A., Hartl, C. & Esper, J., ‘The significance of climate variability on early modern European grain prices.’ Cliometrica, 16 (2022): 29–77.
• Ljungqvist, F.C., Seim, A. & Huhtamaa, H., ‘Climate and society in European history.’ Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change, 12 (2021): e691.
• Ljungqvist, F.C., Seim, A., Krusic, P.J., González-Rouco, J.F., Werner, J.P., Cook, E.R., Zorita, E., Luterbacher, J., Xoplaki, E., Destouni, G., Bustamante, E.G., Aguilar, C.A.M., Seftigen, K., Wang, J., Gagen, M.H., Fleitmann, D., Solomina, O., Esper, J. & Büntgen, U., ‘Summer temperature and drought co-variability across Europe since 850 CE.’ Environmental Research Letters, 14 (2019): 084015.
• Ljungqvist, F.C., Tegel, W., Krusic, P.J., Seim, A., Gschwind, F.M., Haneca, K., Herzig, F., Heussner, K.-U., Hofmann, J., Houbrechts, D., Kontic, R., Kyncl, T., Leuschner, H.H., Nicolussi, K., Perrault, C., Pfeifer, K., Schmidhalter, M., Seifert, M., Walder, F., Westphal, T. & Büntgen, U., ‘Linking European building activity with plague history.’ Journal of Archaeological Science, 98 (2018): 81–92.
• Ljungqvist, F.C., Krusic, P.J., Sundqvist, H.S., Zorita, E., Brattström, G. & Frank, D., ‘Northern Hemisphere hydroclimatic variability over the past twelve centuries.’ Nature, 532 (2016): 94–98.

FRIAS Projekt

Disentangling socio-political and climatic factors for famines in early modern Europe

The interdisciplinary project “Disentangling socio-political and climatic factors for food insecurity in early modern Europe (c. 1500–1800)” aims to systematically investigate which combination of factors made societies in northern Europe, from the 16th to the 18th century, more or less vulnerable to food insecurity and famine.

Our main question is to what extent food shortages and famines can be explained by socio-political and climatic factors, respectively, and how these factors interacted with each other. To answer these questions, we will embrace a novel, holistic, and integrated approach to combine both data from historical written sources (like grain prices and tithe tax records) and natural palaeoclimatic archives (like tree-ring records) in a number of different studies (articles).

The project is among the first of its kind using both data and methods, in an integrated way, from historical scholarship and palaeoclimatology to address problems, at a larger geographical scale, related to food insecurity and famine in early modern Europe. By combining quantitative and qualitative research methods, we jointly study the direct and indirect impacts of climate variability on harvest yields and the socio-political/socio-economic vulnerability to food insecurity in a number of selected case study regions across northern Europe.

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Adaptations to climate change in the northern Baltic region ca 1500–1900

The project “Adapting to Climate Change in the Northern Baltic Sea Region, AD 1500–1900” consists of two subprojects which together address the effect of, and adaptation to, climate change in agriculture and winter transport.

The project uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to study the association between harvests, temperature and precipitation, demographic fluctuations, as well as the impact of winter climate variability on land and sea transport.

The research is expected to result in eight scientific articles written in collaboration with two postdoctoral researchers and a number of other collaborators. The research is breaking new ground by applying research questions similar to those in research on contemporary climate change adaptation on the past.