The Halligen are a group of low-lying, small North Sea islands at the eastern shore of the German Bight. Prior to the major medieval and early modern flood events in the North Sea region, the Halligen were part of the main land. The seminar will discuss how the inhabitants of the coastal regions responded to the major losses of land caused by severe flood events in the medieval and early modern period and how these flood events caused substantial changes to the political set-up of the whole German North Sea region. In addition, the seminar will explain what mitigation strategies were developed once the Halligen had become islands and why giving up the Halligen as a place to live was never an option. Finally, today's mitigation strategies for continued sea level rise in the North Sea region will be introduced and what might be learned from the example of the Halligen when it comes to low-lying islands in other parts of the globe and in particular the Chesapeake Bay region will be discussed.

Ingo Heidbrink is Professor of History at Old Dominion University. He received his M.A. (1994) and his Dr. phil. (1999) from the University of Hamburg. Prior to coming to ODU in 2008, he worked with several German maritime museums and taught at the University of Bremen, where he received his Habilitation (Dr. phil. habil.) in 2004. He was co-founder of the Bremen International Graduate School for Marine Sciences - Global Change in the Marine Realm (GLOMAR); taught at the Ilisimatusarfik, the University of Greenland, in 2003 and 2007; and was a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC) in Munich in 2010 & 2011. His main areas of research include maritime (environmental) history with a special focus on fisheries history, the history of the polar-regions, and the methodology of interdisciplinary maritime history research. He is Secretary General of the International Maritime History Association (IMHA) and Co-President of the North Atlantic Fisheries History Association.

CCPO Innovation Research Park Building I 4111 Monarch Way, 3rd Floor Old Dominion University Norfolk, VA 23508 757-683-4940