Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures

Jason König
  • 5.0 (1)
  • HISTORY

Welcome to the Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures podcast! The aim of the podcast is to bring to light new stories and new perspectives on mountain landscapes and mountain communities around the world, with help from a wide range of expert guests. The podcast showcases exciting new academic research on mountain history, and work by creative practitioners engaging with mountain landscapes in a range of different media.

Episodes

  1. Under the Forest with Faidon Moudopoulos-Athanasiou

    3D AGO

    Under the Forest with Faidon Moudopoulos-Athanasiou

    In this episode Jason König interviews Faidon Moudopoulos-Athanasiou about his work as a landscape archaeologist in the mountainous region of Zagori in northwest Greece. Faidon is Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Researcher in the Computational Archaeology Research Group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, working on a project entitled ‘Under the Forest’. His 2022 book, The Early Modern Zagori of Northwest Greece offers a very wide-ranging reassessment of the landscape archaeology of the region in the Ottoman period and beyond, from the 15th-20th century.   Faidon talks first about his family connections with Zagori and his experience of visiting there in summer holidays as a child. We discuss Faidon’s book on early modern Zagori, work on uncovering local archives in the villages of Zagori, and also his collaborations with the Boulouki Collective on a series of architecture projects in the region. We then we turn to Faidon’s current project, ‘Under the Forest’, which aims to shed new light on the archaeological heritage that is increasingly concealed by afforestation. Faidon describes the ‘remote sensing’ archaeological techniques that allow him to bring that heritage to life, and talks about the tradition of giving special protection to ‘sacred forests’ in the Ottoman period. We talk about Faidon’s work on the region’s successful UNESCO world heritage bid, before turning finally to some of the challenges facing local communities in the mountains of northern Greece, including wildfires and depopulation. Faidon offers some closing reflection on ways in which the creation of cultural trails through the landscape can help with tourist development.

    33 min
  2. Lifelines with Julian Hoffman

    MAY 13

    Lifelines with Julian Hoffman

    In this episode Jason König interviews Julian Hoffman about living in the mountainous region of Prespa in northern Greece, and about his latest project on the Aoos river.  Julian is the prize-winning author of The Small Heart of Things (2012), Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save our Wild Places(2019), and most recently Lifelines: Searching for Home in the Mountains of Greece (2025), which tells the story of his move to Prespa, where he has lived for the last two decades. We start by talking about how Julian’s fascination with mountains first developed on a trip to the foothills of the Himalayas in India. Julian then gives us a sketch of the Prespa region, with its ancient lakes ringed by mountains, stretching across the borders between Greece, Albania and North Macedonia. He describes the hospitality he and his wife received when they moved there from London, the changing relationships between the local population and the mountain landscapes they live close to, and the animals and especially the birds that are such a powerful presence in the experiences he describes in Lifelines.  In the second half we discuss the Aoos/Vjosa river, the last surviving large, free-flowing river in Europe, which runs through northern Greece and Albania. We talk about the amazing variety and environmental richness of the waterways across the whole Aoos river basin, and Julian describes a visit to the Sarantaporos (a tributary of the Aoos) in January 2026 to see the river in flood. Finally we discuss the challenges facing the region – including not just depopulation and the effects of climate change, but also the policy of siting wind turbines in mountain landscapes that are ‘largely pristine, biologically alive, and hugely ecologically important’. We also talk about hope for the future, especially Prespa’s character as a place that can transcend borders and national differences.

    1 hr
  3. Boundary stones of Mt Taygetos with Socrates Koursoumis

    APR 22

    Boundary stones of Mt Taygetos with Socrates Koursoumis

    In this episode Jason König interviews Socrates Koursoumis about his archaeological work in the mountains of Greece, especially on Mount Taygetos. Socrates is an archaeologist of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. He has been a staff member of the Central Department of the Ministry, as well as the Ephorates of Lesbos, Attica, Elia, Messenia and the Corinthia. He has undertaken several excavations in Attica, the Peloponnese, the Aegean islands, and Crete, and carried out three surveys at Lavreotiki, on Mount Taygetos (Messenia) and on Mt Lykaion (Arcadia). We start by talking about Socrates’ early experience of the mountain regions of Lesbos in his childhood, before moving on to discuss the first steps in his archaeological work in the mountains. Socrates talks about his work on Mount Lykaion and the mountains of Arkadia, and about the importance of walking if we want to understand the history of these places. We then to turn to his excavations on the site of the ancient silver mines at Laurion in Attica. In the second half we take a look at Mount Taygetos, particularly Socrates' work on the sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis in the northern Taygetos region on the borders with Messenia, his decades-long research project on the ancient boundary stones on the Taygetos summit ridge, and finally a recent project on the continuities between ancient and modern wine production in the region. Socrates ends with some final reflections on the (sometimes dangerous!) challenges of mountain archaeology, and its value for local communities. This episode was edited by Zofia Guertin. To learn more about the Mountains of Greece project you can visit our website https://mountainsofgreece.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/ and subscribe for regular updates, or follow us on Bluesky @mountainsofgreece.bsky.social.  For the broader Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures project please visit our website https://msmf.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk and subscribe for regular updates, or follow us on Bluesky @futuremountain.bsky.social.

    30 min
  4. History of the Pindus with Molly Greene

    APR 15

    History of the Pindus with Molly Greene

    In this episode Jason König interviews Molly Greene about her research on the history of the Pindus mountains in Ottoman Greece, from 1400-1821. Molly is Professor of History and Hellenic Studies at Princeton University. Her research has focused on many different aspects of the history of the Mediterranean Basin, the Ottoman Empire, and the Greek world. Her interests include the social and economic history of the Ottoman Empire, the experience of Greeks under Ottoman rule and the early modern Mediterranean. Her publications include her award-winning 2010 book, Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants: A Maritime History of the Mediterranean 1450-1700. Molly starts by talking about how she first came to be interested in the mountain regions of Greece as a possible research topic, first of all during the four years she spent living in Greece after her undergraduate degree, and then again in the early 2010s, on a wintry detour through the mountains during a drive from Athens to Thessaloniki. She discusses some of the models she has found helpful for thinking about mountains, in the work of historians like Fernand Braudel and James Scott, before going on to outline some of the challenges of telling the story of a region that has traditionally been viewed as being ‘without history’. We talk about the importance of monasteries and monastic history for understanding the region’s connectedness with the rest of Greece, but also some of the difficulties of accessing sources. Molly then zooms in on a case study of the monastery and bridge at Tatarna before offering some final reflections on why it matters to make mountain history more visible. This episode was edited by Zofia Guertin. To learn more about the Mountains of Greece project you can visit our website https://mountainsofgreece.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/ and subscribe for regular updates, or follow us on Bluesky @mountainsofgreece.bsky.social.  For the broader Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures project please visit our website https://msmf.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk and subscribe for regular updates, or follow us on Bluesky @futuremountain.bsky.social.

    33 min
  5. Paths of Greece with Fivos Tsaravopoulos

    APR 8

    Paths of Greece with Fivos Tsaravopoulos

    In this episode Jason König interviews Fivos Tsaravopoulos, founder and manager of Paths of Greece. This is the first episode in our new Mountains of Greece series within the Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures podcast project. Paths of Greece was founded in 2010 as a social co-operative enterprise, and has played a leading role over the last fifteen years in developing new hiking routes across Greece. We talk first about Fivos' childhood spent on archaeological sites around Greece, and then his first Paths of Greece projects on Kythera and elsewhere. Fivos talks about some of the bewilderment that greeted his early efforts from local people, but also the growing interest in hiking in Greece over the last decade or so, and the special character of the mountains of Greece as 'hospitable' that marks them out from some of the other big mountaineering destinations in Europe. We talk about some possible ways of quantifying the economic and health impacts of the 2000 km of trails that Paths of Greece have established over the last few years. Fivos then gives some examples of recent work, for example the Paths of Peace project at Florina, and talks about some of the similarities and differences between mountain and island trail projects. Finally we discuss the challenges of depopulation that a lot of Greek mountain communities are facing, and some of the ways in which tourism might be able to help. This episode was edited by Zofia Guertin. To learn more about the Mountains of Greece project you can visit our website https://mountainsofgreece.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/, or follow us on Bluesky @mountainsofgreece.bsky.social.  For the broader Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures project please visit our website https://msmf.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk, or follow us on Bluesky @futuremountain.bsky.social.

    28 min

  6. MAR 25

    somewhere nowhere with Harriet and Rob Fraser

    In this episode, Jason König and Jonathan Pitches interview Harriet and Rob Fraser, collectively known as somewhere nowhere, an environmental art and research practice undertaken collaboratively using their skills as a writer and photographer respectively. Harriet and Rob use photography, poetry and other art forms, along with walking and research to focus on what they identify as sensitive environments and cultures. They work alongside scientists, farmers and analysts as well as public organisations concerned with environmental work, landscape care and rural policies. We talk first about the origins of Rob and Harriet’s work together in the Lake District, and the beginnings of somewhere nowhere, including a brief look at Anne Stevenson’s poem ‘Utah’, where that phrase comes from. We also talk about the importance of curiosity as a driving force for their practice. We then look in turn at a series of Rob and Harriet’s recent projects. We start with The Long View from 2018 (‘meetings with seven remarkably ordinary trees in Cumbria in all weathers, all seasons, night and day’), and use that as a starting point for digging into the importance of walking for their practice, the particular challenges of doing photography in mountain environments, and Rob and Harriet’s relationship with the long tradition of poetic and artistic engagement with the Lake District stretching back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Next we turn to a Sense of Here, from 2019, which involved imagining the Lake District National Park as a clock face, and each month camping, and erecting a canvas with a line of poetry, on one of the hour lines, as part of an enquiry into the place from multiple perspectives. Finally we chat about Harriet and Rob’s role as founder members of the research group the Place Collective, and about some of the challenges and opportunities facing the Cumbrian fells. Podcast editing by Zofia Guertin. You can follow the project on Bluesky @futuremountain.bsky.social To learn more about the Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures project please visit our website here (https://msmf.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk).

    1h 3m

  7. MAR 11

    Peak Pursuits with Caroline Schaumann

    In this episode, Jason König and Jonathan Westaway interview Caroline Schaumann about her work on the history of mountaineering.  Caroline is Professor of German Studies at Emory University. She combines an interest in ecocriticism and the environmental humanities with expertise in the history of exploration and mountaineering. Her 2020 book Peak Pursuits: The Emergence of Mountaineering in the Nineteenth Century (Yale University Press) offers a reassessment of the history of exploration and mountaineering in the nineteenth century, covering the Andes, the Alps and the Sierra Nevada. She has also published a series of other edited volumes on mountain history, including two book on mountains in German literature and culture from the medieval world to the present, and more recently a volume together with Kamaal Haque and Christian Quendler entitled Global Mountain Cinema, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2025.  We start by asking Caroline about her own experience of the mountains, first as a child growing up in Germany, through summer hiking trips to Switzerland, and then in her first exposure to rock climbing in Yosemite after she moved to California. Caroline talks about the way in which her personal experience of climbing as an embodied practice (the way in which ‘you really become part of the environment rather than just being a spectator’) informs her research, especially in Peak Pursuits, which draws out the way in which intimate physical contact with the rock emerges over and over again as a theme in early mountaineering writing. Caroline then talks about the way in which her project reassesses the role of Alexander von Humboldt. For example, she discusses  Humboldt’s repeated interest in drawing attention to his own mountaineering failures, and the way in which that can help us to move beyond summit-focused visions of mountaineering. We also discuss the way in which Humboldt’s homosexuality (which was not acknowledged by some earlier researchers) prompts a reassessment of pervasive heteronormative versions of mountaineering history. We also discuss a number of other key figures who play a role in Peak Pursuits, especially Edward Whymper and John Muir. In the final section of the interview we turn to Caroline’s Global Mountain Cinema volume, discussing some of the ways in which that book redirects attention to a whole series of relatively little-known moments in cinematic history and brings a rich transnational dimension to our understanding of twentieth-century mountaineering history. Caroline also talks about some future projects, one on the history of the barometer as an object that played a central role in nineteenth-century mountaineering, and another on the German explorers the Schlagintweit brothers and their explorations in the Himalaya and Central Asiain the mid-nineteenth century. This episode was edited by Zofia Guertin. You can follow the project on Bluesky @futuremountain.bsky.social To learn more about the Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures project please visit our website here (https://msmf.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk)

    40 min

  8. FEB 25

    Summit Positions with Peter Hansen

    In this episode, Jason König and Jonathan Westaway interview Peter Hansen about his research on mountain history in the Alps and the Himalayas. Peter Hansen is Professor of History and Director of International and Global Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. He has been a leading figure in the recent expansion of interest in mountaineering history. His 2013 book The Summits of Modern Man: Mountaineering after the Enlightenment explored the idea of the summit position—in other words the image of the mountaineer standing alone on a mountain summit—as a symbol of individual sovereignty and enlightenment. Other publications include the 2024 volume Other Everests: One Mountain, Many Worlds, jointly edited with Paul Gilchrist and Jonathan Westaway. He is currently working on another book on Everest. Peter talks first about the origins of his interest in mountain and mountaineering history, through a chance encounter with a reference to the Alpine Club library in a list of archives. We then turn to The Summits of Modern Man, looking among other things at the way in which Peter’s concept of the ‘summit position’ can help us to think freshly about the idea of mountaineering as a manifestation of modernity. We encounter some of the characters and incidents from 19th- and early 20th-century mountaineering history that play a central role in the book, for example in the repeated debates in mountaineering history about who was first to reach particular summits, illustrated here through Peter’s retelling of the story of the first ascent of Mont Blanc in 1786 by Jacques Balmat and Michel Paccard. In the second half of the episode we turn to Peter’s work on Everest, particularly the Other Everests project, looking especially at the way in which the book and accompanying exhibition set out to open up new indigenous, non-western perspectives on mountaineering history, and also more broadly at the huge potential for postcolonial approaches in mountain studies. Finally we look at some possible futures for research on Everest, and reflect on the implications that work might have for local communities in the region. This episode was edited by Zofia Guertin. You can follow the project on Bluesky @futuremountain.bsky.social To learn more about the Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures project please visit our website here.

    41 min

  9. FEB 11

    Why Everest? with Lachlan Fleetwood

    In this episode, Jason König and Jonathan Westaway interview Lachlan Fleetwood about his research on Himalayan history. Lachlan is a historian of science, empire, geography and environment. He completed his PhD in History at the University of Cambridge in 2020, and has subsequently held research fellowships at University College Dublin, Yale and Munich. His first book, Science on the Roof of the World: Empire and the Remaking of the Himalaya, was published by Cambridge University Press in May 2022. The book examines ‘exploration and imperial knowledge production in the Himalaya during a period when scientific practices evolved alongside the realization of the true scale of the mountains’ heights’, with a special focus on the interplay between science and empire.  Lachlan sketches out for us some of his fascination with early 19th-century Himalayan history. This was a period when new ideas about altitude were developing very rapidly.  The podcast explores changing patterns of Western interaction with local populations, culminating in the final confirmation of Everest as the highest mountain the world in 1856, and the end of East India Company rule in the Indian subcontinent in 1857. Just 50 years before, Western scientists had believed that Chimborazo in Ecuador was the highest mountain in the world, and claims about the height of the mountains of the Himalaya had been widely doubted. We examine the emergence of the idea of measuring and comparing a mountain’s altitude as a way of knowing mountains. This was a Western scientific approach that replaced other cultural approaches to high places and overwrote indigenous ways of understanding mountain spaces. So this is a story about when and why we decided that altitude above sea level is something that should make some mountains matter more than others. We discuss some of the challenges and frustrations involved in doing science in the mountains in this period, for example through malfunctioning or poorly designed equipment. Lachlan also talks us through some of the many first-person accounts of the difficulties involved in surveying or collecting geological specimens in border regions, for example on the border with Tibet, where there was a constant risk of conflict with Qing border officials. We also discuss the importance of indigenous brokers and intermediaries in the production of scientific knowledge, and the relationship between western and indigenous conceptions of mountain landscapes. Finally, Lachlan looks ahead to some exciting new possibilities, including a future project on notions of habitability and uninhabitability in 19th-century Asia. He also reflects on the way in which studying the long history of mountains can help us to see that many of our current ways of thinking about geographical space are not as inevitable as they appear. Looking to the past, to understand how our ideas about mountains developed, can help us to question some of the things we take for granted in our approach to mountains, and perhaps open up space to think about our engagement with mountain environments differently in the future. This episode was edited by Zofia Guertin. You can follow the project on Bluesky @futuremountain.bsky.social To learn more about the Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures project please visit our website here (https://msmf.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk)

    46 min
  10. Into the Mountain with Simone Kenyon

    JAN 28

    Into the Mountain with Simone Kenyon

    In this episode Jonathan Pitches and Jason König interview Simone Kenyon about her work as a practice researcher, performer, artist and producer. We focus especially on her work as the choreographer and artistic creator of the place-sensitive performance piece Into the Mountain, inspired and informed by the lyrical and embodied prose of Nan Shepherd’s 1974 book, The Living Mountain.  Building on six years of preparatory work Into the Mountain drew on the input of nearly 100 women, many of whom reside in the Cairngorm area, and merged guided walking practices with choreography, and a 22-piece choir singing a newly composed piece.  The episode begins with some discussion of Simone’s early experiences of walking and mountains growing up in Bradford, West Yorkshire and then in the Lake District. We then discuss some of Simone’s earlier work on a range of outdoor walking art projects, for example her project in 2006 The Pennine Way: The Legs that Make Us with Tamara Ashley, and the way in which that helped to shape her conceptions of walking as an aesthetic practice. The bulk of the episode then focuses on the Into the Mountain project. Simone talks about the influence of Nan Shepherd on the project and about her engagement with the bodily routines of climbing and mountaineering in her choreography. We discuss some of the practices and methodologies that lie at the heart of the project, for example the dance practice of ‘Body Weather’ and the way in which it helps to challenge conceptions of the separation between body and environment. Simone also talks about some of the practical challenges of the project: for example, negotiations with landowners in the Cairngorms. Finally we look ahead to some possible future projects, and future prospects for rethinking human relationships with mountain landscapes and engaging with mountain communities in Scotland and beyond. This episode was edited by Zofia Guertin. You can follow the project on Bluesky @futuremountain.bsky.social To learn more about the Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures project please visit our website here (https://msmf.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk)

    51 min
  11. Xenophobic Mountains with Alexandra Cotofana

    12/16/2025

    Xenophobic Mountains with Alexandra Cotofana

    In this episode, Jason König and Jonathan Westaway interview Alexandra Cotofana about her work on the mountains of Romania.  Alexandra is a cultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. She is the author of Xenophobic Mountains. Landscape sentience reconsidered in the Romanian Carpathians, (2022), and co-editor of Sentient Ecologies: Xenophobic Imaginaries of Landscape (2022). The episode begins with a discussion of Alexandra’s experience of growing in the Carpathian mountains in Romania, and with some reflections on the challenges of doing ethnography in a community you are close to. We then turn to Alexandra’s Xenophobic Mountains book. Alexandra starts by explaining the concept of sentient and xenophobic landscape. She contextualises it in relation to recent developments in anthropology and in the humanities more broadly which question the dominance of rationalising, western modes of thought, and ask us to ‘take other world views seriously’, including notions of the agency of landscape and other non-human entities.  We then go on to talk about the way in which those ideas apply in Romanian history. We discuss the stories that circulated around the crash of an Israeli Defence Force helicopter in the Romanian mountains in 2010, where the mountain was said to have caused the crash. We talk among other things about how those ideas are paralleled in other cultures and how they have been shaped by the experience of occupation and resistance in Romanian history. We also discuss how the prevalence of these ideas in the mountain regions of the country can help us to understand the rise of right-wing nationalism that has had international prominence recently in the Romanian presidential elections of 2025. Alexandra discusses future plans for a history of mountain huts in Romania and the way in which they have been intertwined with national discourse throughout the 20th century and beyond. The podcast ends with some final reflections on why it is an urgent priority to understand the entanglement between mountain communities and nationalist discourse better. This episode was edited by Zofia Guertin. For a version of our podcast with closed captions and transcript please visit this link. To learn more about the Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures project please visit our website here (https://msmf.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk)

    50 min
  • 11 Episodes

About

Welcome to the Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures podcast! The aim of the podcast is to bring to light new stories and new perspectives on mountain landscapes and mountain communities around the world, with help from a wide range of expert guests. The podcast showcases exciting new academic research on mountain history, and work by creative practitioners engaging with mountain landscapes in a range of different media.

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