University of Chicago, PhD '05

Cambridge, M.Phil. 1997

BIOGRAPHY

My work lies at the intersection of environmental history, history of science and technology, and political economy. Originally trained in eighteenth-century British history, I range widely across the early modern and modern periods, often with an eye to processes and networks that defy national boundaries. I am convinced that historical research holds a crucial key to understanding and explaining the planetary emergency unfolding around us.

Questions of growth and scarcity are central to my research. My first book, Enlightenment’s Frontier (Yale, 2013) explores the environmental dimension of the Scottish Enlightenment; my second book Green Victorians (Chicago 2016, runner-up for the Ruskin Book Prize 2017), co-authored with Vicky Albritton, interprets the Arts and Crafts movement of John Ruskin as an early experiment in degrowth and post-carbon living; my third book Scarcity (Harvard, 2023), co-authored with Carl Wennerlind (Barnard College/Columbia University), historicizes the concept of neoclassical scarcity by charting rival conceptions of abundance and limits across five hundred years of European economic thought. Scarcity will be published in French translation in March 2025 as Politique de la rareté by Flammarion with a prologue by Arnaud Orain. I have also edited a volume of essays on scarcity and abundance in global context with Frank Trentmann, John Brewer and Neil Fromer (Bloomsbury, 2019).

My next book, Pandora’s Box: The First Fossil Fuel Economy, is forthcoming with Princeton University Press in 2027. It charts the making of the first fossil fuel economy in Britain. While my book draws inspiration from recent histories of fossil capitalism, I part ways from them by emphasizing the role of the developmental state in shaping the new energy regime and its environmental foundations. Rather than positing a single turning point, my approach stresses a multisectoral pattern of gradual intensification through many interlocking forces, including deep mining, urban demand, canal infrastructure, iron manufacture, factory production, and food imports, which together formed what I call the “fossil ratchet.” The second part of the book explains how the fossil economy gave rise to new imaginaries of growth centered on the coal supply and new expectations of rising living standards from cheap energy. This movement of fossil cornucopianism is arguably the most important legacy of Britain’s energy path, so pervasive now that it entirely defines and permeates modern politics and economics.

Another forthcoming project The Long Acceleration, coedited with Moritz von Brescius (University of Basel), marks a major intervention in the Anthropocene debates, featuring contributions from more than 20 leading scholars. Our aim is to establish a new conceptual and empirical framework to explore the underlying historical causes behind the planetary impact of the global fossil fuel economy after 1950.

My articles and essays has been published in The American Historical Review, The Historical Journal, Isis, The Journal of British Studies, The Journal of Modern History, Eighteenth Century Studies, William and Mary Quarterly, Critical Historical Studies, History and Theory, and Environmental History. Writings for a wider audience have appeared in The Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, and Le grand continent.

With Jan Goldstein and John Boyer, I am the editor of The Journal of Modern History. We welcome submissions that span the whole range of European history (broadly defined to include imperial and global contexts) from 1500 to the present. I am also a member of the editorial board of the journal History of Science and Anthropocene History. 

My research has been supported by a number of foundations and research centers, including the American Council of Learned Societies, The Institute of Historical Research in London, the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Notre Dame, and The Centre for Excellence for Anthropocene History at Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan in Stockholm. 

I am happy to supervise doctoral students in all the fields of my expertise. I regularly co-chair dissertations with colleagues in the history department. Past and present dissertation topics include the science of fodder grasses in the British settler colonies, migrant labor and climate history in nineteenth century America, epidemics, ecology, and imperial ports in the British Empire, the history of plankton science, and science and economic reform in the Danish Empire. While the academic job market remains difficult for the foreseeable future, I feel confident that strong students can still land good jobs, especially with historical topics focused on environmental themes.