Faculty
Dagomar Degroot
Dagomar Degroot is an environmental historian who bridges the humanities and sciences to explore how societies have thrived - or suffered - in the face of dramatic changes in the natural world. His first book, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720 (Cambridge University Press) was named by the Financial Times as one of the ten best history books of 2018. It explains how one society - the Dutch Republic - prospered as many others faltered when Earth's climate cooled the seventeenth century. His second book, Civilization and the Cosmos: An Environmental History of Humanity's Place in the Solar System (Harvard University Press/Penguin Random House), argues that dynamic environments across the solar system have played a bigger role in human history than previously imagined. Degroot's other publications investigate, for example, the role of animal culture in shaping human responses to climate change; the historical connections between war and environmental change; the potential of documentary sources for reconstructing climate change; and the social consequences of violent events in the distant solar system. Degroot also leads two emerging groups of international scholars: one that traces cultural change among sentient animals in the Arctic over the past millennium, and another that finds examples of societal resilience to pre-industrial climate changes. Degroot uses public and digital histories to bring the unique insights of environmental history to academics, journalists, policymakers, and the general public. He is the founder and director of HistoricalClimatology.com, a website that currently receives more than 500,000 hits annually, and the co-founder and co-director of the Climate History Network, an organization of nearly 200 academics in humanistic and scientific disciplines. He founded and hosts the Climate History Podcast, and founded Climate Tipping Points, a project that aims to introduce a broad audience to the local consequences of climate change. While working on these and other projects, Degroot teaches courses on topics that include the Little Ice Age, anthropogenic global warming, the environmental history of outer space, big history, and the Anthropocene.
Kathryn de Luna
Kathryn de Luna studies early African History, adapting archaeological, linguistic, and genetic data to the historian’s archive. Her research has explored the connections between political culture and changing practices in and on the environment. Her first book, Collecting Food, Cultivating People (Yale, 2016) explores the histories of subsistence over the last three thousand years in central Africa and won the Agricultural History Society’s Wallace Award and was named a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. She is currently working on two projects. The first explores the relationship between mobility and climate in medieval central Africa by combining language evidence with new archaeological excavation and survey as well as various methods from the archaeological sciences and biogeochemistry to reconstruct individual migration biographies and fire events for a period and place where we rare have such micro-scale data on environmental history. The second project traces the interconnected histories of pyrotechnology, politics, senses, and emotions in central Africa over the last three thousand years.
Meredith McKittrick
Meredith McKittrick is a historian of Southern Africa who focuses on the intersection of race and environment. Her interests include dryland environments, water, and agriculture. She received her BA from the University of Texas at Austin and her PhD from Stanford University. After completing her first book on generational and gender relationships in colonial Namibia, Meredith became a convert to environmental history. Her articles have appeared in Environmental History, History of Meteorology, the Journal of African History, and the Journal of Southern African Studies. She teaches courses on sub-Saharan Africa, environmental history, comparative race studies, and settler colonialism, and is currently the director of the Georgetown Institute for Global History. In 2018-19 she was a fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. After she completes a book on popular ideas about climate, water, and race in early 20th-century southern Africa, she will turn back to two other projects: a study of riparian communities on the Angolan-Namibian border, and a global history of underground water exploration and exploitation.
John McNeill
John McNeill was born and raised in Chicago and remains passionately devoted to the professional sports teams of the Windy City. He earned, or at any rate was awarded, a BA from Swarthmore College and a PhD from Duke University. Since 1985 he has cheerfully served two masters, as a faculty member of the School of Foreign Service and History Department at Georgetown. From 2003 until 2006 he held the Cinco Hermanos Chair in Environmental and International Affairs, until his appointment as University Professor. He teaches world history, environmental history, and international history at Georgetown; and writes books, and directs PhD students, mainly in environmental history. His most recent book, co-authored with his former PhD student Peter Engelke, is The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945. He is a former president of the American Society for Environmental History and in 2019 serves as president of the American Historical Association. He is a member of the Anthropocene Working Group, charged with making a scientific determination as to whether or not the Anthropocene should be formally recognized as a unit of geological time. He lives an agreeably harried existence with his triathlete wife and their four exuberant children.
Timothy Newfield
Tim Newfield is an environmental historian and historical epidemiologist. After defending his doctoral thesis in History and Classical Studies at McGill University in 2011, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the universities of Michigan (History), Stirling (Centre for Environment, Heritage and Policy) and Princeton (History & the Environmental Institute). He joined Georgetown as an Assistant Professor in History and Biology in Spring 2017. Tim teaches interdisciplinary environmental and medieval history, and regularly leads seminars on global infectious disease history. His recent work has focused on human-bovine plagues and the measles-rinderpest divergence in Eurasia in the first millennium CE, on the prevalence of Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium malariae in early post-classical Europe, on short-term/rapid climate change and food shortage in the Frankish period, and on an intercontinental bovine panzootic in late antiquity, which seems not to have occurred. He completed a synthesis of the historical and palaeoclimatic scholarship on the 535-550 global climatic downturn for the Palgrave Handbook of Climate History a short while ago. His papers have appeared in Agricultural History Review (2009), Argos (2012), Early Medieval Europe (2017), Geology (2017), History Compass (2018), Journal of Interdisciplinary History (2015, 2017), Journal of Roman Archaeology (2017), Late Antique Archeology (2018), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2018), Post-Classical Archaeologies (2015), Royal Society Open Society (2017) and edited volumes (2012, 2013, 2013, 2018, forthcoming) focused on various aspects of premodern health, environment and economy. At present, he is finishing the re-write of his doctoral thesis on subsistence crises, epidemics and epizootics in Carolingian Europe, co-editing a two-volume handbook for Brill on medieval environmental history, and leading a multi-author study on European mortality events between the Justinianic Plague and Black Death. He also co-leads the Climate Change and History Research Initiative (cchri.princeton.edu) at Princeton University. Most of his current work is collaborative and multidisciplinary. One project looks at how the Medieval Climatic Anomaly and the rise of the Mongol Empire altered the pathogenic load of European and West Asian livestock. Another considers the influence of falling summer temperatures in the Late Antique Little Ice Age on the occurrence of Y. pestis and malaria in western Eurasia. Another reconsiders current understandings of the second-century Antonine Plague in light of historical and paleoclimatic data and with insights from evolutionary biology. At Georgetown, Tim is working with Bryna Cameron-Steinke on early medieval marginal landscapes, climate and infectious disease, and with Dylan Proctor on the early modern globalization of the foot-and-mouth disease virus.
Dagomar Degroot is an environmental historian who bridges the humanities and sciences to explore how societies have thrived - or suffered - in the face of dramatic changes in the natural world. His first book, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720 (Cambridge University Press) was named by the Financial Times as one of the ten best history books of 2018. It explains how one society - the Dutch Republic - prospered as many others faltered when Earth's climate cooled the seventeenth century. His second book, Civilization and the Cosmos: An Environmental History of Humanity's Place in the Solar System (Harvard University Press/Penguin Random House), argues that dynamic environments across the solar system have played a bigger role in human history than previously imagined. Degroot's other publications investigate, for example, the role of animal culture in shaping human responses to climate change; the historical connections between war and environmental change; the potential of documentary sources for reconstructing climate change; and the social consequences of violent events in the distant solar system. Degroot also leads two emerging groups of international scholars: one that traces cultural change among sentient animals in the Arctic over the past millennium, and another that finds examples of societal resilience to pre-industrial climate changes. Degroot uses public and digital histories to bring the unique insights of environmental history to academics, journalists, policymakers, and the general public. He is the founder and director of HistoricalClimatology.com, a website that currently receives more than 500,000 hits annually, and the co-founder and co-director of the Climate History Network, an organization of nearly 200 academics in humanistic and scientific disciplines. He founded and hosts the Climate History Podcast, and founded Climate Tipping Points, a project that aims to introduce a broad audience to the local consequences of climate change. While working on these and other projects, Degroot teaches courses on topics that include the Little Ice Age, anthropogenic global warming, the environmental history of outer space, big history, and the Anthropocene.
Kathryn de Luna
Kathryn de Luna studies early African History, adapting archaeological, linguistic, and genetic data to the historian’s archive. Her research has explored the connections between political culture and changing practices in and on the environment. Her first book, Collecting Food, Cultivating People (Yale, 2016) explores the histories of subsistence over the last three thousand years in central Africa and won the Agricultural History Society’s Wallace Award and was named a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. She is currently working on two projects. The first explores the relationship between mobility and climate in medieval central Africa by combining language evidence with new archaeological excavation and survey as well as various methods from the archaeological sciences and biogeochemistry to reconstruct individual migration biographies and fire events for a period and place where we rare have such micro-scale data on environmental history. The second project traces the interconnected histories of pyrotechnology, politics, senses, and emotions in central Africa over the last three thousand years.
Meredith McKittrick
Meredith McKittrick is a historian of Southern Africa who focuses on the intersection of race and environment. Her interests include dryland environments, water, and agriculture. She received her BA from the University of Texas at Austin and her PhD from Stanford University. After completing her first book on generational and gender relationships in colonial Namibia, Meredith became a convert to environmental history. Her articles have appeared in Environmental History, History of Meteorology, the Journal of African History, and the Journal of Southern African Studies. She teaches courses on sub-Saharan Africa, environmental history, comparative race studies, and settler colonialism, and is currently the director of the Georgetown Institute for Global History. In 2018-19 she was a fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. After she completes a book on popular ideas about climate, water, and race in early 20th-century southern Africa, she will turn back to two other projects: a study of riparian communities on the Angolan-Namibian border, and a global history of underground water exploration and exploitation.
John McNeill
John McNeill was born and raised in Chicago and remains passionately devoted to the professional sports teams of the Windy City. He earned, or at any rate was awarded, a BA from Swarthmore College and a PhD from Duke University. Since 1985 he has cheerfully served two masters, as a faculty member of the School of Foreign Service and History Department at Georgetown. From 2003 until 2006 he held the Cinco Hermanos Chair in Environmental and International Affairs, until his appointment as University Professor. He teaches world history, environmental history, and international history at Georgetown; and writes books, and directs PhD students, mainly in environmental history. His most recent book, co-authored with his former PhD student Peter Engelke, is The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945. He is a former president of the American Society for Environmental History and in 2019 serves as president of the American Historical Association. He is a member of the Anthropocene Working Group, charged with making a scientific determination as to whether or not the Anthropocene should be formally recognized as a unit of geological time. He lives an agreeably harried existence with his triathlete wife and their four exuberant children.
Timothy Newfield
Tim Newfield is an environmental historian and historical epidemiologist. After defending his doctoral thesis in History and Classical Studies at McGill University in 2011, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the universities of Michigan (History), Stirling (Centre for Environment, Heritage and Policy) and Princeton (History & the Environmental Institute). He joined Georgetown as an Assistant Professor in History and Biology in Spring 2017. Tim teaches interdisciplinary environmental and medieval history, and regularly leads seminars on global infectious disease history. His recent work has focused on human-bovine plagues and the measles-rinderpest divergence in Eurasia in the first millennium CE, on the prevalence of Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium malariae in early post-classical Europe, on short-term/rapid climate change and food shortage in the Frankish period, and on an intercontinental bovine panzootic in late antiquity, which seems not to have occurred. He completed a synthesis of the historical and palaeoclimatic scholarship on the 535-550 global climatic downturn for the Palgrave Handbook of Climate History a short while ago. His papers have appeared in Agricultural History Review (2009), Argos (2012), Early Medieval Europe (2017), Geology (2017), History Compass (2018), Journal of Interdisciplinary History (2015, 2017), Journal of Roman Archaeology (2017), Late Antique Archeology (2018), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2018), Post-Classical Archaeologies (2015), Royal Society Open Society (2017) and edited volumes (2012, 2013, 2013, 2018, forthcoming) focused on various aspects of premodern health, environment and economy. At present, he is finishing the re-write of his doctoral thesis on subsistence crises, epidemics and epizootics in Carolingian Europe, co-editing a two-volume handbook for Brill on medieval environmental history, and leading a multi-author study on European mortality events between the Justinianic Plague and Black Death. He also co-leads the Climate Change and History Research Initiative (cchri.princeton.edu) at Princeton University. Most of his current work is collaborative and multidisciplinary. One project looks at how the Medieval Climatic Anomaly and the rise of the Mongol Empire altered the pathogenic load of European and West Asian livestock. Another considers the influence of falling summer temperatures in the Late Antique Little Ice Age on the occurrence of Y. pestis and malaria in western Eurasia. Another reconsiders current understandings of the second-century Antonine Plague in light of historical and paleoclimatic data and with insights from evolutionary biology. At Georgetown, Tim is working with Bryna Cameron-Steinke on early medieval marginal landscapes, climate and infectious disease, and with Dylan Proctor on the early modern globalization of the foot-and-mouth disease virus.
Graduate Students
Bryna Cameron-Steinke joined the PhD program in 2018. She studies the environmental history of northwestern continental Europe in the early Middle Ages (6th-10th centuries), focusing on the development and use of marginal landscapes, namely marshlands and woodlands. Her approach is interdisciplinary and combines textual and scientific data (palynological and paleoclimatic). How climate change and infectious disease influenced the cultures and economies of marginal regions is of interest to her. In particular she seeks to explore the threat vector-borne diseases posed and how landscape and climate change impacted disease prevalence. Before coming to Georgetown, Bryna completed a bachelor’s degree in History and Organismal Biology from McGill University and a master’s degree in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Medieval Studies. When she isn't reading about monks and marshlands, Bryna enjoys swimming, hiking, and watching period dramas.
Conference Participation
Rob Christensen joined the PhD program in 2016. His dissertation looks at indigenous people, environmental change, and historical epidemiology centered around the late-nineteenth century Campaign of the Desert in Argentina. Before coming to Georgetown, he earned an MA at the University of New Mexico and tended a small farm. He is an avid fan of the Utah Jazz.
Publications
Matthew P. Johnson joined the PhD program in 2015. He studies twentieth-century environmental history with an emphasis on energy and water in Latin America and the Caribbean. He is currently writing his dissertation about the environmental impacts of the Brazilian government’s hydroelectric dams, which once provided as much as 96 percent of the electricity consumed in Brazil, and continue to provide more than two thirds. These dams and their consequences will be framed in the context of climate crisis and the worldwide search for alternatives to fossil fuel-based energy regimes. He has also published on irrigation dams and malaria in Puerto Rico and has a forthcoming publication about the environmental footprint of a large oil refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Publications
Emma C. Moesswilde joined the PhD program in 2019. She studies environmental history of the Enlightenment and the long eighteenth century, focusing on agriculture in Scotland and the British Empire. She is currently investigating agricultural improvement within the context of British imperialism, as well as the role of early modern climate data in understanding British agricultural change. Her research has been supported by the Surdna Foundation and a Paul Nyhus Travel Grant. She was a visiting student at the University of Glasgow and has conducted archival research throughout the United Kingdom. Before coming to Georgetown, Emma earned her bachelor’s degree in history and environmental studies from Bowdoin College. In addition to her work as a historian, Emma is a yoga teacher, outdoorswoman, and enthusiastic cook.
Natascha Otoya joined the PhD program in 2017. Her research focuses on the development of the oil industry in Brazil in the first half of the 20th century. She is particularly interested in human/nature interactions and how different groups, like politicians and scientists, viewed such interactions. Additionally, her research interests overlap with the field of history of science, as geology is a central element in the search and exploration of petroleum in Brazil, and she hopes to further develop collaborations with this branch of the natural sciences. Before coming to Georgetown, Natascha completed a Master's degree in Social History at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil. Non-academic interests include cycling, swimming in the ocean and a new-found love for yoga.
Publications
Jackson Perry joined the PhD program in 2014. His research examines the spread of the eucalyptus tree genus to the Mediterranean region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He focuses on the politics and science of forestry in modern Europe and the Middle East, the emergence of transregional scientific networks and institutions, and the place of large-scale forest transformations in the onset of the Anthropocene. His research has been supported by research grants from the Council of American Overseas Research Centers and the Forest History Society. Before coming to Georgetown, Jackson completed a master’s degree in Near Eastern Studies at New York University. When he isn't reading about forests, Jackson is probably jogging in Rock Creek Park.
José Carlos Pons Ballesteros is an environmental scientist interested in biogeographical change in the central highlands of Mexico. More specifically, he is interested in understanding how humans have shaped earth and evolutionary dynamics in the region for the last couple millennia. José has also enjoyed conducting research projects in Greece, Argentina, and Madagascar. Before coming to Georgetown, he earned a master's degree in ecology from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. When not exploring how the earth works, he can be found producing short (but hopefully informative) films about environmental science, sustainability, and conservation.
Select Publications
Dylan Atchley Proctor joined the program in 2016. He studies environmental history and historical epidemiology to better understand the consumption and trade of non-human animals (and their parts). His dissertation traces the dissemination of the foot-and-mouth disease virus out of west-central Europe and across the African continent. An infectious disease of primarily livestock and a few wild herds of African buffalo, his research interrogates how African and European preferences for certain meat and milk products, and the efforts to make these widely accessible, shaped global pathogen ecologies from the XVIII century to the present day. Prior to his studies at Georgetown, Dylan received two bachelors in French literature and International Studies with a concentration in Africa at the University of Wyoming in his hometown of Laramie. He spent the following five years in Boston, MA working as a line cook and sausage maker while earning a master’s degree in medical anthropology from the Boston University School of Medicine.
Hillar Schwertner joined the PhD program in 2013. His research examines the transnational water history of the California borderlands since 1848. He is especially interested in the development, distribution, and consumption of limited water resources in the transborder metropolis of "Tijuandiego"--the largest and most economically significant of more than a dozen transborder cities that transcend the political boundary. His dissertation seeks to show how the pursuit of this precious commodity has driven the development of a new urban frontier, and how its scarcity might threaten the growth of the region into the future. Before joining the PhD program, Hillar completed a master's degree in Global, International & Comparative History at Georgetown University.
Conference Participation
Conference Participation
- “Habent ibi silvam, ubi possunt saginari porci mille: Woodland Economies in Carolingian Polyptychs,” 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2019.
Rob Christensen joined the PhD program in 2016. His dissertation looks at indigenous people, environmental change, and historical epidemiology centered around the late-nineteenth century Campaign of the Desert in Argentina. Before coming to Georgetown, he earned an MA at the University of New Mexico and tended a small farm. He is an avid fan of the Utah Jazz.
Publications
- “Environment and the Conquest of the Desert, 1876-1881,” in Carolyne Ryan Larson (ed) The Conquest of the Desert: History and Memory (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020).
- “Che Guevara and the Hombre Nuevo in Cuba: The Ideological Reformation of Foreign Policy,” Historia, 2 (2012): 85-109.
Matthew P. Johnson joined the PhD program in 2015. He studies twentieth-century environmental history with an emphasis on energy and water in Latin America and the Caribbean. He is currently writing his dissertation about the environmental impacts of the Brazilian government’s hydroelectric dams, which once provided as much as 96 percent of the electricity consumed in Brazil, and continue to provide more than two thirds. These dams and their consequences will be framed in the context of climate crisis and the worldwide search for alternatives to fossil fuel-based energy regimes. He has also published on irrigation dams and malaria in Puerto Rico and has a forthcoming publication about the environmental footprint of a large oil refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Publications
- “‘Thirsty Sugar Lands’: Environmental Impacts of Dams and Empire in Puerto Rico since 1898.” Environment and History. (Forthcoming, published online).
- “Black Gold of Paradise: Negotiating Oil Pollution in the U.S. Virgin Islands, 1966-2012.” Environmental History. (Forthcoming October 2019, published online).
- “Swampy Sugar Lands: Irrigation Dams and the Rise and Fall of Malaria in Puerto Rico, 1898-1962.” Journal of Latin American Studies 51, no. 2 (May 2019): 243-271.
Emma C. Moesswilde joined the PhD program in 2019. She studies environmental history of the Enlightenment and the long eighteenth century, focusing on agriculture in Scotland and the British Empire. She is currently investigating agricultural improvement within the context of British imperialism, as well as the role of early modern climate data in understanding British agricultural change. Her research has been supported by the Surdna Foundation and a Paul Nyhus Travel Grant. She was a visiting student at the University of Glasgow and has conducted archival research throughout the United Kingdom. Before coming to Georgetown, Emma earned her bachelor’s degree in history and environmental studies from Bowdoin College. In addition to her work as a historian, Emma is a yoga teacher, outdoorswoman, and enthusiastic cook.
Natascha Otoya joined the PhD program in 2017. Her research focuses on the development of the oil industry in Brazil in the first half of the 20th century. She is particularly interested in human/nature interactions and how different groups, like politicians and scientists, viewed such interactions. Additionally, her research interests overlap with the field of history of science, as geology is a central element in the search and exploration of petroleum in Brazil, and she hopes to further develop collaborations with this branch of the natural sciences. Before coming to Georgetown, Natascha completed a Master's degree in Social History at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil. Non-academic interests include cycling, swimming in the ocean and a new-found love for yoga.
Publications
- "Oil in 20th century Brazil: Energy Dependence in the Second World War," Varia Historia, 34 no. 65 (2018): 347-374.
- "Petroleum and Science: The National Petroleum Council and the Development of Oil Geology in Brazil," in Silvia Fernanda Figueirôa, Gregory A. Good, and Drielli Peyerl (eds) History, Exploration & Exploitation of Oil and Gas (New York: Springer, 2019).
- "The development of oil geology in Brazil from a postcolonial perspective," 3rd World Congress of Environmental History, Florianópolis, Brazil, July 2019.
- "On humans and rocks: intersections of human and geological history in the Doce River Basin, Brazil," 9th Symposium of the Society of Latin American and Caribbean Environmental Historians (SOLCHA), Liberia, Costa Rica.
- "Oil, politics and science: the development of oil geology in Brazil," Geological Society of America Meeting, Seattle, Oct. 2017.
Jackson Perry joined the PhD program in 2014. His research examines the spread of the eucalyptus tree genus to the Mediterranean region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He focuses on the politics and science of forestry in modern Europe and the Middle East, the emergence of transregional scientific networks and institutions, and the place of large-scale forest transformations in the onset of the Anthropocene. His research has been supported by research grants from the Council of American Overseas Research Centers and the Forest History Society. Before coming to Georgetown, Jackson completed a master’s degree in Near Eastern Studies at New York University. When he isn't reading about forests, Jackson is probably jogging in Rock Creek Park.
José Carlos Pons Ballesteros is an environmental scientist interested in biogeographical change in the central highlands of Mexico. More specifically, he is interested in understanding how humans have shaped earth and evolutionary dynamics in the region for the last couple millennia. José has also enjoyed conducting research projects in Greece, Argentina, and Madagascar. Before coming to Georgetown, he earned a master's degree in ecology from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. When not exploring how the earth works, he can be found producing short (but hopefully informative) films about environmental science, sustainability, and conservation.
Select Publications
- Pons, José C. Book Review: The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change. Journal of Industrial Ecology (May 2017).
- Bouwmeester, René, Georgios Kerametsidis, Sofia Maniatakou and José C. Pons. First Integrated Marine Ecological Assessment of Samothraki. Sustainable Mediterranean. Special Issue, No. 73 (Dec 2016).
- Powell, Jon, José C. Pons, Marian Chertow. Waste Informatics: Establishing Characteristics of Contemporary US Landfill Quantities and Practices (1960-2013). Environmental Science and Technology. 50 (20). (Sep 2016).
Dylan Atchley Proctor joined the program in 2016. He studies environmental history and historical epidemiology to better understand the consumption and trade of non-human animals (and their parts). His dissertation traces the dissemination of the foot-and-mouth disease virus out of west-central Europe and across the African continent. An infectious disease of primarily livestock and a few wild herds of African buffalo, his research interrogates how African and European preferences for certain meat and milk products, and the efforts to make these widely accessible, shaped global pathogen ecologies from the XVIII century to the present day. Prior to his studies at Georgetown, Dylan received two bachelors in French literature and International Studies with a concentration in Africa at the University of Wyoming in his hometown of Laramie. He spent the following five years in Boston, MA working as a line cook and sausage maker while earning a master’s degree in medical anthropology from the Boston University School of Medicine.
Hillar Schwertner joined the PhD program in 2013. His research examines the transnational water history of the California borderlands since 1848. He is especially interested in the development, distribution, and consumption of limited water resources in the transborder metropolis of "Tijuandiego"--the largest and most economically significant of more than a dozen transborder cities that transcend the political boundary. His dissertation seeks to show how the pursuit of this precious commodity has driven the development of a new urban frontier, and how its scarcity might threaten the growth of the region into the future. Before joining the PhD program, Hillar completed a master's degree in Global, International & Comparative History at Georgetown University.
Conference Participation
- "Aguas Transfronterizas: Tijuandiego, 1920-1950," XV Reunión Internacional de Historiadores de México, Guadalajara, MX, Oct. 2018
- "A New El Dorado: Watering the Transborder Boom Town, 1920-1929," American Historical Association, Washington, DC, Jan. 2018
- "Dividing the Spoils: North American Responses to Inequality of Access in Changing Border Waterscapes,” (co-written with Meredith Denning), Georgetown University Environmental History Graduate Student Conference, Washington, DC, Nov. 2017
- "The San Diego Aqueduct and its Implications for Tijuana," Western History Association, St. Paul, MN, Nov. 2016
Alumni
Linda Ivey (2003), Associate Professor, California State University – East Bay. Linda wrote her dissertation on a farming community near Monterey in California (late 19th and 20th c).
George Vrtis (2004), Associate Professor, Carleton College. George’s dissertation was about gold mining in 19th century Colorado.
Peter Engelke (2011), Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council. Peter’s dissertation was on city planning in Munich in the 1960s-1980s. Peter is the co-author with John McNeill of The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 (2016).
Marc Landry (2013), Assistant Professor, Central European History, and Associate Director, Austria Center (Innsbruck), University of New Orleans. Marc’s dissertation dealt with hydroelectric development in the Alps, c. 1890-1960.
Erin Stewart Mauldin (2014), Assistant Professor, University of South Florida. Erin’s dissertation was on agriculture in the southern U.S. before, during, and after the Civil War. She received Georgetown's 2016 Harold N. Glassman Award for a Dissertation in the Humanities. It is now published in revised form as Unredeemed Land with Oxford University Press (2018).
Chris Gratien (2015), Academy Scholar, Harvard University, 2016-17, and Assistant Professor of Environmental History, University of Virginia. Chris’s dissertation was on the Çukurova (c. 1850-1950), a coastal plain in southern Turkey. He is a co-creator of the Ottoman History Podcast network. His principal adviser was Dr. Judith Tucker.
Elizabeth Williams (2015), Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Elizabeth’s dissertation was on efforts and discourses surrounding agricultural modernization in greater Syria, c. 1870-1940. Her principal adviser was Dr. Judith Tucker.
Alan Roe (2016), currently a lecturer in the history department at West Virginia University. His book, Into Russian Nature: Tourism, Environmental Protection, and National Parks in the Twentieth Century, will be published by Oxford University Press in the spring of 2020.
Graham Pitts (2016), currently holds an American Druze Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Graham's dissertation was on famine in twentieth-century Lebanon.
Faisal Husain (2018), Assistant Professor, Penn State. His dissertation examined the establishment of a unified Ottoman imperial regime over the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the sixteenth century and the consequences of this political transition on the state, provincial settlements, and the environment. He is currently developing his dissertation into a book project under the title Water and Power in the Ottoman Tigris-Euphrates Basin.
Meredith Denning (2018), wrote her dissertation about the United States and Canada's transnational water management of the lower Great Lakes over the course of the twentieth century.
Robynne Mellor (2018), researches the interactions among environments, human bodies, uranium, and Cold War diplomacy. Her dissertation, “The Cold War Underground: An Environmental History of Uranium Mining in the United States, Canada, and the Soviet Union, 1945-1991,” comparatively examines the ways in which access to uranium impeded and facilitated certain strategic maneuvers, as well as the ways that these diplomatic choices shaped landscapes and bodies in the United States, Canada, and the Soviet Union.
Clark L. Alejandrino (2019), Assistant Professor, Trinity College. Clark wrote his dissertation on typhoons in South China from the fifth century to the twentieth century.
George Vrtis (2004), Associate Professor, Carleton College. George’s dissertation was about gold mining in 19th century Colorado.
Peter Engelke (2011), Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council. Peter’s dissertation was on city planning in Munich in the 1960s-1980s. Peter is the co-author with John McNeill of The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 (2016).
Marc Landry (2013), Assistant Professor, Central European History, and Associate Director, Austria Center (Innsbruck), University of New Orleans. Marc’s dissertation dealt with hydroelectric development in the Alps, c. 1890-1960.
Erin Stewart Mauldin (2014), Assistant Professor, University of South Florida. Erin’s dissertation was on agriculture in the southern U.S. before, during, and after the Civil War. She received Georgetown's 2016 Harold N. Glassman Award for a Dissertation in the Humanities. It is now published in revised form as Unredeemed Land with Oxford University Press (2018).
Chris Gratien (2015), Academy Scholar, Harvard University, 2016-17, and Assistant Professor of Environmental History, University of Virginia. Chris’s dissertation was on the Çukurova (c. 1850-1950), a coastal plain in southern Turkey. He is a co-creator of the Ottoman History Podcast network. His principal adviser was Dr. Judith Tucker.
Elizabeth Williams (2015), Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Elizabeth’s dissertation was on efforts and discourses surrounding agricultural modernization in greater Syria, c. 1870-1940. Her principal adviser was Dr. Judith Tucker.
Alan Roe (2016), currently a lecturer in the history department at West Virginia University. His book, Into Russian Nature: Tourism, Environmental Protection, and National Parks in the Twentieth Century, will be published by Oxford University Press in the spring of 2020.
Graham Pitts (2016), currently holds an American Druze Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Graham's dissertation was on famine in twentieth-century Lebanon.
Faisal Husain (2018), Assistant Professor, Penn State. His dissertation examined the establishment of a unified Ottoman imperial regime over the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the sixteenth century and the consequences of this political transition on the state, provincial settlements, and the environment. He is currently developing his dissertation into a book project under the title Water and Power in the Ottoman Tigris-Euphrates Basin.
Meredith Denning (2018), wrote her dissertation about the United States and Canada's transnational water management of the lower Great Lakes over the course of the twentieth century.
Robynne Mellor (2018), researches the interactions among environments, human bodies, uranium, and Cold War diplomacy. Her dissertation, “The Cold War Underground: An Environmental History of Uranium Mining in the United States, Canada, and the Soviet Union, 1945-1991,” comparatively examines the ways in which access to uranium impeded and facilitated certain strategic maneuvers, as well as the ways that these diplomatic choices shaped landscapes and bodies in the United States, Canada, and the Soviet Union.
Clark L. Alejandrino (2019), Assistant Professor, Trinity College. Clark wrote his dissertation on typhoons in South China from the fifth century to the twentieth century.