ASEH Vice President/President-Elect

Nancy J. Jacobs
Professor, Department of History, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

I am a historian of South Africa, of colonial Africa, of the environment, of animals. My first book Environment, Power, and Injustice: A South African History (Cambridge 2003) was a study of environmental aspects of the economic underdevelopment of a Black homeland in South Africa. My second monograph Birders of Africa: History of a Network (Yale 2016) took a more cultural turn by analyzing the racial politics of environmental knowledge in colonial Africa. Currently, I’m completing a collection co-edited with Graeme Wynn and Jane Carruthers on environmental justice as a theme in southern African history. I’ve also published less explicitly environmental works: a few biographical articles and a primary source collection, African History through Sources (Cambridge 2014). My current research project is “The Global Grey Parrot” a monograph on African greys on four continents over five centuries. I’m inspired by recent work on multi-species entangled agencies and excited to be working on such a charismatic species.

My service to the ASEH includes: Chair of the Local Arrangements Committee for the 2003 Providence conference; Executive Board Member 2008-11; Chair of the Environmental History editor search committee 2016-17; Chair of the Program Committee for the 2020 Ottawa conference; co-convener of the “Race and Environment” webinar series, fall 2020. I was among the founders of the Women’s Environmental History Network (WEHN). I am a member of the editorial boards for Environmental History, and the International Review of Environmental History.

I experience the ASEH as a welcoming and stimulating space. I value its members’ curiosity, care about the more-than-human, and commitment to justice. I maintain that histories of class, racial, and colonial injustice have long been central to environmental history, although the organization’s membership does not match that breadth. I applaud the efforts of recent leadership and of the Committee on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity to make the organization more inclusive. I commit to continuing previous efforts to diversify the profile of the ASEH and to create an affirming space for scholars of all kinds. Other remaining goals are: increasing the ASEH’s public outreach and presence in policy discussions, even as we transition to a post-pandemic, perhaps more virtual, community.

ASEH Treasurer

Frederick “Fritz” Davis, Purdue University

Like so many others, I found my intellectual home in ASEH. It would be an honor to repay some of the debt I owe to the society by serving in the role of Treasurer, having served as Assistant Treasurer (2019-2020). I first became seriously interested in the budgets of learned societies when I served as Local Arrangements Chair for the 2009 ASEH conference in Tallahassee, Florida. Through fundraising and tracking the budget for the annual meeting, I learned some of the many elements of ASEH finance.

Currently, I am the Department Head and Professor in the Department of History at Purdue University, where I also hold the R. Mark Lubbers Chair in the History of Science. As Department Head, I manage an annual budget in excess of $4 million. Budget management became considerably more complex when COVID-19 transformed higher education.

My research interests lie at the intersection of environmental history and the history of environmental science / environmental health. I recently published Banned: A History of Pesticides and the Science of Toxicology (Yale University Press). I also wrote The Man Who Saved Sea Turtles: Archie Carr and the Origins of Conservation Biology (Oxford University Press). My current research projects include “Making Silent Spring,” a study of how Rachel Carson wrote her bestselling exposé of the ecological and health risks of chemical pesticides. I am also writing on the idea of regeneration as applied at the ecosystem level as part of a multiyear grant sponsored by the McDonnell Foundation and the Marine Biological Laboratory – Woods Hole. I spent 2016-17 at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on a Fulbright. Before that, I taught environmental history and the history of science at Florida State University, where I co-created the Program for the History and Philosophy of Science. I studied the history of science and environmental history at Harvard, the University of Florida, and Yale, where I received my Ph.D.

In addition to my service to ASEH, I served on editorial boards for ISIS: An International Review devoted to the History of Science and Civilization, Agricultural History, Endeavour, and the Journal of the History of Biology. I also contribute to two organizations at the intersection of environmental history and the history of science: the Earth & Environmental Sciences Forum of the History of Science Society and the Earth & Environmental Science Working Group at the Philadelphia Area Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine.

ASEH Secretary

Peter S. Alagona, University of California, Santa Barbara

I attended my first ASEH conference as a graduate student in Denver in 2002, and I have considered the society my intellectual home ever since. I am honored to have been nominated to serve for a second term as Secretary.

For my day job, I am an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. My work explores what happens when humans share space and resources (their habitats) with other species: how we interact with non-human creatures, how we make sense these interactions, why we fight so much about them, what we can learn from them, and how we might use these lessons to foster a more just and sustainable society. My first book, on endangered species in California, was published by UC Press in 2013. I am currently working on several projects, including a book, slated for publication in late 2021, about the history of wildlife in American cities. I am also leading a multipronged, collaborative, interdisciplinary project exploring the past, present, and potential future of grizzly bears in California—with an eye on a potential future reintroduction. What could possibly go wrong?

ASEH Council:

Vote for THREE

Vandana Baweja, University of Florida

I am an associate professor the School of Architecture and the Sustainability Program in the college of Design, Construction and Planning at the University of Florida, Gainesville. I got my PhD in architecture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. I was trained as an architect in New Delhi, India, and got a master’s in architecture at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture in London, UK. My areas of research are – global histories of Tropical Architecture, histories of Sustainable Architecture, and their representation in film and photography. I am the Co-Editor, of Arris: The Journal of The Southeast Chapter of The Society of Architectural Historians, published by UNC press. At the moment I am editing a book project titled Narratives of Disease, Discomfort, Development, and Disaster: Reconsidering (sub)Tropical Architecture and Urbanism with Dr Deborah van der Plaat (The University of Queensland),) and Professor Tom Avermaete (ETH Zurich). The book project investigates histories of Disease, Discomfort, Development, and Disaster in the field of tropical architecture – a mid-twentieth century global architectural movement that was predicated upon the emerging relationship between architecture and climatology.

Through my publications on Tropical Architecture, I have investigated how ideas about the relationship between architecture and climate were forged in the mid-twentieth century and circulated globally along the networks of the British Empire. My recent publications include: “Otto H. Koenigsberger (1908–1999) and Global Histories of Modernism,” DOCOMOMO Journal 63, (2020). I have produced four peer-reviewed lectures on Global Cities in Cinema for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC) funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and managed by MIT's School of Architecture and Planning and its History Theory and Criticism Program. These lectures – “Shanghai In Cinema” Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019 and “Bombay/Mumbai In Cinema,” Lecture created for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), 2019 are available for at  https://gahtc.org/lectures/291 and https://gahtc.org/lectures/292

The University of Florida has launched a general education curriculum called Quest to offer first-year humanities courses that examine questions about the human condition. I have served on the University of Florida’s Quest 1 curriculum committee as member to vet courses offered through Quest 1 for the entire university. As part of the Quest program, I developed a class titled, Globalization and Cities in Cinema, which investigates how architecture and urbanism are transformed by globalization processes and how films depict globalization of cities from the point of view of the people who have been disempowered through the power imbalances unleashed by global forces. With my students, we investigated how filmic narratives represent urban environments and negotiations related to class, race, nationality, ethnicity, and gender in rapidly transforming cities. Through this project I became a Quest Inquiry Scholar at UF. As part of the Quest Inquiry Scholarship, I am working with Dr. Nancy Dana and other Quest faculty to conduct pedagogical research on teaching my Quest class Globalization and Cities in Cinema.

In the past, I have been the recipient of grants from the Florida Humanities Council and the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC). I have produced peer reviewed teaching materials and curriculum for the GAHTC. I am a member of the governing board of the Undergraduate Sustainability Major offered by the College of Design, Construction and Planning at the University of Florida. I am a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for European Studies (CES) at UF.

I am member of my college level Diversity Committee of the College of Design, Construction and Planning; and a member oof the American Society of Environmental History. I hope to expand ASEH’s collaboration with architectural historians and hope to introduce more scholars who work on the visual representation of urban environments in popular media such film and photography.

Matthew Evenden, University of British Columbia

The ASEH has been a source of intellectual inspiration and collegial support since I first started attending meetings as a graduate student in 1997 (go Baltimore!).  Many of my career highlights can be traced to the annual meetings and the conversations, collaborations and projects that have resulted.  I’ve been honored to receive an ASEH prize (Carson) and to serve on an ASEH Prize committee (Alice Hamilton), to publish in and co-edit a special issue for Environmental History as well as serve on the editorial board.  I’m delighted by the opportunity to be considered for the ASEH council and would be committed to the Society and its future as we try to navigate complex problems, including the pandemic, climate change and its implications for academic meetings, and the need to address equity, diversity and inclusion.

Trained as an historian, I am a Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia where I serve as the Associate Vice-President of Research and Innovation.  In this administrative role, I have a front row seat on current developments in grant funding, government policy, scholarly communications, interdisciplinary collaborations, international partnerships and innovation.  My research and teaching lie in Canadian environmental history and historical geography and focus on the history of water and rivers.  Some of my major publications include Fish versus Power (CUP 2004), The River Returns, co-authored with Chris Armstrong and Viv Nelles (MQUP 2009), and Allied Power (UTP 2015) on hydro-electricity in the Second World War.  Currently, I am developing a new research interest in the history of ballast and biological exchange.  Over time, I have participated in a range of efforts to organize and promote environmental history as a founding executive member of NiCHE (Network in Canadian History and Environment) and co-organizer of the Nature, History and Society group in British Columbia.      

Jim Feldman, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

I am a Professor of History & Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where I also serve as Director of the Environmental Studies Program. My research and teaching interests include American and global environmental history, with a particular focus on national parks, wilderness, nuclear waste, and sustainability. I am the author of A Storied Wilderness: Rewilding the Apostle Islands and the editor of Nuclear Reactions: Documenting American Encounters with Nuclear Energy. I have led several national conferences on infusing sustainability into the higher education curriculum. My current research focuses on the sustainability and environmental justice implications of the search for a permanent geologic repository for commercial radioactive waste.    

ASEH has been my scholarly home since the earliest steps in my intellectual journey. ASEH brings together a community of scholars that is interdisciplinary, supportive, and inspiring. I have attended every annual conference since 2003 and have left each one with renewed energy directed at my teaching, research, and work in campus sustainability initiatives. As the director of an interdisciplinary liberal arts environmental studies program, I particularly value the way that ASEH has created a platform for environmental historians from a wide range of disciplinary homes to gather and discuss the shared challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary research, teaching, policy applications, and program building.   

I will bring to the ASEH Executive Committee a dedication to continued interdisciplinary collaboration and the perspective from a regional comprehensive university with a majority of first-generation college students. These perspectives will be increasingly important as higher education in the US and around the globe continues to change and evolve.  

Sarah Hamilton, Auburn University

I am an associate professor of history and the director of the Academic Sustainability Program at Auburn University, where I teach courses in world and environmental history. My research explores the global history and politics of water use, with a focus on the interactions of conservation, scientific expertise, and primary production. My first book, Cultivating Nature: The Conservation of a Valencian Working Landscape (University of Washington Press) won both the 2019 Turku Book Award (from the ESEH and the Rachel Carson Center) and the Baker-Burton Award (from the Southern Historical Association). Currently, I am working on a global history of large-scale groundwater extraction spanning 150 years and five continents, and am eagerly awaiting a return to fieldwork when global conditions allow.

The ASEH is not only my intellectual home but has also provided me with my strongest and most meaningful professional relationships. My record of service for the organization dates to the 2010 Portland conference (my first), when I was selected as the graduate student representative to the executive council. Since that time, I have contributed to a number of committees and initiatives within ASEH, largely on issues of diversity and inclusion. Currently, I am the chair of the Sustainability Committee. I have also been part of the steering committee of the Women’s Environmental History Network since its inception in 2016. Outside of the ASEH I have longstanding ties with both the ESEH and the World History Association and an extensive record of service with the latter that includes service on multiple prize committees, editorial boards, and the executive council. I currently serve on the editorial board of the Spanish journal Historia Agraria, where I instigated and implemented the overhaul of editorial policies in an effort to address severe gender imbalances in publication and reviews.

I am thrilled and honored to have been nominated for the ASEH’s executive council. While I am eager to serve in any way, if elected I would be particularly interested in continuing my work to enhance the participation, visibility, and prestige of women and BIPOC scholars in our field.

Sean Kheraj, York University

ASEH has been one of my primary scholarly communities since I was a graduate student and attended the first annual meeting in Canada (Victoria, BC) in 2004. I look forward to the opportunity to serve on the ASEH council and contribute to ongoing efforts to enhance membership and outreach, improve digital infrastructure and communication, and diversify our membership. I've previously served for several years on ASEH's Digital Communications Steering Committee.

I am an associate professor of Canadian and environmental history at York University where I also serve as associate dean for academic programs in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. My current research explores the social and environmental consequences of the development, operation, and regulation of long-distance oil pipelines in Canada. It examines Canada’s postwar oil boom in the decades following the discoveries of substantial deposits of crude oil at Leduc, Alberta when corporations began transporting massive volumes of petroleum across the continent via long-distance pipelines. I've also published research on the history of non-human animals in urban environments. I'm the author of Inventing Stanley Park: An Environmental History and co-author of a digital open educational resource textbook Open History Seminar: Canadian History. 

I have experience serving in a variety of capacities for scholarly associations and organizations. Currently, I'm the director of the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE), Canada's largest scholarly network for researchers in the field of environmental history. We support a range of scholarly activities including an open access digital publishing platform at https://niche-canada.org, which includes blog articles, podcasts, videos, and a peer-reviewed occasional research paper series called Papers in Canadian History and Environment. I have also served as a councilor for the Canadian Historical Association and I continue to serve on the board of Heritage Toronto.

Ruth Morgan, Australian National University, Canberra

I am an Associate Professor in the School of History at the Australian National University, where I am Director of the Centre for Environmental History, having taken over the reins from Professor Tom Griffiths in mid-2020. I am the author of Running Out? Water in Western Australia (UWAP, 2015), co-author of Cities in a Sunburnt Country: Water and the Making of Urban Australia (CUP, 2021), and author of Climate Change and International History: Climate Diplomacy in the Global North and Global South since 1950 (Bloomsbury, 2022). I have published widely on the water and climate histories of Australia and the British Empire, and I am a Lead Author in Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s forthcoming Assessment Report 6. My current research project examines the environmental exchanges between British India and the Australian colonies during the long nineteenth century.

I attended my first ASEH meeting in 2010 when I was still a graduate student. Thoroughly enriched by this experience, I participated in a further four ASEH conferences before enthusiastically accepting an invitation to serve on the 2020 Program Committee under the leadership of Professor Nancy Jacobs. I also serve on the executive committees of other environmental history organisations, such as the International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations, the European Society for Environmental History, the International Water History Association, and the Australia and New Zealand Environmental History Network. In addition to these roles, I am an associate editor of the open-access journal International Review of Environmental History, and will soon join the Editorial Advisory Committee of Environment and History.

The field of environmental history is remarkable for its collaborative and supportive nature, and it is this spirit of inclusiveness and cooperation that I see ASEH’s vital contribution to building, strengthening, and diversifying the discipline. I would be delighted to continue this tradition as a member of the ASEH Council, where I would prioritize closer engagement between historians and policymakers on the host of ecological challenges we face; enhancing the diversity and inclusion of the field; and enriching the ways in which we teach environmental history in and beyond our classrooms.

Peter Thorsheim, UNC Charlotte

I am professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where I’ve taught since 2000. I’ve attended ASEH meetings regularly since my first one in Las Vegas in 1995, and I’ve been a regular at breakfast meetings sponsored by the Envirotech and War and Environment interest groups. I’ve published numerous articles and reviews in our journal, and I served on its editorial board from 2015 to 2019. I’m also on the board of the Journal of Urban History, have served on the AHA’s Forkosch book prize committee, and have taken part in national screening meetings for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. I’ve written two monographs, Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and the Environment in Britain since 1800 (Ohio University Press, 2006), and Waste into Weapons: Recycling in Britain during the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 2015). My most recent book, co-edited with Bill Luckin, is A Mighty Capital under Threat: The Environmental History of London, 1800-2000 (Pittsburgh University Press, 2020). My work focuses on British history, urban-environmental history, and environmental problems resulting from technology and war. My current project, supported in part by a grant from the American Philosophical Society and the British Academy, examines the environmental, medical, and ethical dimensions of chemical weapons testing, development, and disposal throughout the British empire in the twentieth century. The ASEH has been my primary intellectual home and the source of many great friendships since my years as a graduate student, and I am honored to stand for election to its council.

ASEH Nominating Committee:

Vote for TWO

Faisal Husain, Pennsylvania State University

I am an assistant professor of history at Penn State University, where I teach courses on environmental history, the Ottoman Empire, and the Silk Road. My articles have appeared in Environmental History and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, and my book, Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire, is slated to published in 2021. I serve on the editorial board of Global Environment, an environmental history journal based in Italy.

I owe much of my career to ASEH. Since 2014 in San Francisco, ASEH has given me a platform to present and publish my research; more importantly, it has given me a venue to meet and learn from outstanding scholars, many of whom I’m now lucky to call friends. Service is the least I can give ASEH in return. That is why I feel honored and privileged to stand for election to the nominating committee. If elected, my primary goal will be to recruit officers committed to the ASEH’s mission—to promote rigorous education and research about human interactions with the rest of nature over time. As liberal arts colleges and programs come under renewed assault during this pandemic, we have to redouble our efforts to make the case why environmental history is a public good that deserves protection and support, in North America and around the globe.

Daniel Macfarlane, Western Michigan University

My first ASEH was the 2010 Portland conference. I was a grad student at the time, and the ASEH quickly became one of my primary academic communities and a conference I always looked forward to (field trips!). I was on the local organizing committee for the cancelled 2020 ASEH conference in Ottawa, and would have led a field trip to the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project. At the 2013 ASEH in Toronto I co-led the post-conference field trip to Niagara Falls.

I’m an Associate Professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at Western Michigan University. I’m also a senior fellow in the Bill Graham Center at the University of Toronto, and for 2020-21 I’m a visiting fellow at the University of Michigan. I was raised and educated in Canada but I’ve spent close to a decade at several different U.S. universities as a postdoc, Fulbright Visiting Research Chair, and professor. My research tends to focus on the environmental, energy, technological, and transnational history of Canada-US border waters, especially the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin. I’m the author or co-editor of four books, including two books published in 2020: The First Century of the International Joint Commission and Fixing Niagara Falls: Environment, Energy, and Engineers At the World’s Most Famous Waterfall. I’m working on two new book projects, both of which will hopefully be submitted for peer review in 2021: a survey history of US-Canada environmental and energy relations, and a transnational environmental history of Lake Ontario (with Colin Duncan).

I have been an executive member of the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE) since 2014, as well as a contributing editor (and a spell as the lead editor) for NiCHE’s blog/website. I recently completed a term on the AHA-CHA’s Corey Prize committee, and I have been active in the Envirotech group and served on the Joy Parr Travel Prize committee. I’m currently the President of the International Water History Association (IWHA), and I’ve also had other executive roles within that organization. My IWHA activities included organizing the biannual international conference and representing the association to ICEHO. I would try to use these experiences and connections to other networks, combined with my knowledge of the American environmental history landscape (pun intended), to recruit a diverse range of folks for ASEH positions.

Emily Pawley, Dickinson College

I teach environmental history, food studies, and the history of science at Dickinson College. Dickinson is a sustainability-focused liberal arts college in central Pennsylvania sited, in Carlisle, the site of the cultural genocide that occurred at the Indian Industrial School, on Susquehannock, Lenni Lenape, Haudenosaunee, and Shawnee land.

I write about cultivated landscapes as sources of knowledge and my book The Nature of the Future: Agriculture, Capitalism, and Science in the Antebellum North came out in April 2020. I have also published on analytic tables, cattle portraiture, counterfeit apples, and aphrodisiacs for sheep. At the moment I’m working on a project on the history of nurture and another on the long term histories of carbon sequestration. Next year, I’ll be organizing a workshop for historians, particularly junior and contingent scholars, working on the histories of climate change solutions, which, I hope, are about to become pretty relevant. I’m also a member of the Environmental Historians Action Collaborative, a new working group of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, that came out of a meeting at ASEH in 2018. We strive to bring historical expertise to modern environmental debates and in 2020, we published op-eds, produced joint annotations of environmentally-focused speeches by President Trump and President-Elect Biden, and issued public comments on proposed EPA rule changes. 

ASEH has been a source of community, inspiration, and friends for me since my first meeting, in Minneapolis in 2006. I haven’t previously given back to the society and would love to do so. Working on the nominating committee, I would be interested in elevating voices that can help the society contend with the simultaneous crises of higher education and climate change by amplifying the voices of contingent and junior scholars and those doing the hard work of activism and public engagement.

Maya Peterson, University of California, Santa Cruz

I am an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where I teach courses on Russian and Eurasian history, as well as environmental history. My first book, Pipe Dreams: Water and Empire in Central Asia’s Aral Sea Basin (Cambridge Studies in Environment and History, 2019), explores the deeper roots of the disappearance of the Aral Sea – considered one of the worst environmental catastrophes of the late twentieth century – by going back to the nineteenth century, to Russia’s conquest of Central Asia and entry into what I call the “irrigation age.” More recently, I have been working on a transnational history of the therapeutic uses of kumys (a fermented mare’s milk originating on the Eurasian steppes) from the nineteenth century to the present.

I first attended a meeting of the ASEH over a decade ago in Portland. As a graduate student recently returned from fieldwork in Russia and Central Asia, I was grateful to be the recipient of a graduate student conference travel award, and I was even more grateful for the collegial atmosphere and the warm reception by other ASEH members, including senior scholars in the field. I have been back for many conferences since then, but although I have served other professional organizations of which I have been a member, including the European Society for Environmental History and the International Water History Association, I have not yet given back to ASEH, so I welcome this opportunity.

I have been pleased in recent years to see that ASEH has increased its commitment to diversity within the organization; as a member of the Nominating Committee, I would pledge to continue and deepen that commitment, in order to make sure that our leadership reflects a variety of perspectives from people of different backgrounds, serving at different kinds of institutions in different geographic locations, and whose research represents the broad geographical, temporal, and methodological range of our members, particularly as ASEH continues to evolve and grow. Having spent three summers (2012-14) in residence as a fellow and visiting scholar at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, and through participation in numerous workshops and conferences on environmental history, agricultural history, and the history of science, I have come to know an extensive network of environmental historians. Since moving to California from the East Coast in 2012, I have also come to know a diverse network of educators at a variety of institutions in the West. As a member of the Nominating Committee, I would draw on these networks to ensure that ASEH has the strongest leadership possible in these exciting and challenging times.