Hal Rothman Dissertation Fellowship

Guy Erez (PhD candidate  NYU) : “Neighborly Ecologies: Animals and Urbanization in Early Modern France and Burgundy”

J. Donald Hughes Graduate Research Fellowships

Hairong Huang  (PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto): “Swine Revolution: Ecology, Technology & the Making of Pigs in Maoist China (1949-76)”

David Strickler (PhD Candidate University of Tennessee):““The Color of Water: W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Aquatic Ecologies, and the Hydrological Struggle for Abolition-Democracy”

Samuel P. Hays Fellowship

Kevan Malone (University of Miami) for the book project: Line in the Watershed: An Environmental History of US-Mexico Relations at the Tijuana-San Diego Border

Early Career Research Grants

Hailey Doucette (University of Kansas)

Charlie Jones (Mississippi State University)

Amit Sadan (University of New Mexico)

Zachary Crouch (Carnegie Mellon University)

Ariel Schnee (University of Oklahoma)

ASEH Fellows

Angela Vergara (California State University, Los Angeles)

Dustin Meier (John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York)

Equity Graduate Student Fellowship

Zach Nora (PhD student at University of Oklahoma): “Imagining a Chicana/o Landscape: Reconstructing Identity and Reclaiming Nature in the Rio Grande Borderlands, 1880-1990”

ASEH-Forest History Society Graduate Student Essay Prize

Weilan Ge (PhD student at the University of Florida): “From the Pearl of the Inner Harbor to Noah’s Ark—The Transformation of the National Aquarium in Baltimore”

Leopold-Hidy Award to honor the best article in the journal, Environmental History

Molly Warsh (University of Pittsburgh): “Seasonal Harvests: Migration, Reproduction, and Religion in the Early Modern Spanish Tuna Fisheries” (July 2025).

This article argues that the early modern Spanish tuna fisheries were a compelling maritime cultural theater in which species, calendars, and cultural practices collided. Combining the accounts of early modern religious observers, visual, literary, and bureaucratic records, and the insights of modern marine biologists, Warsh argues that the seasonal spectacle of the almadraba illuminated distinct cross-species modalities of oceanic migration and reproduction. As fishworkers pursued bluefin tuna and Jesuit missionaries sought to fulfill their biblical calling to be “fishers of men,” the seasonal harvests of the almadraba revealed gendered early modern ideas about mobility and transformation in a maritime context.

Rachel Carson Prize for the best dissertation

Meng Ran Xu  (University of Toronto) :“Producing Socialism in the Web of Life: An Agricultural and Environmental History of Mao’s China”

Xu delves into environmental perspectives to better understand the Chinese postwar revolution, noting that the creation of a socialist state in China was not merely a political or social project, but a fundamentally environmental one. The dissertation explores how Maoist China attempted to reorganize the web of life—interactions between human labor, agricultural production, and natural ecosystems—to achieve rapid industrialization and social equality in China during the Maoist era. Through an environmental history lens, Xu analyzes the modernization of agriculture, the reshaping of landscapes, and the changing role of peasants in their interaction with land, water, and seeds. Focusing on the rural landscape and communities, the dissertation offers us new understanding as to how the socialist project was not merely a top-down imposition but was coproduced through everyday labor, agricultural experimentation, and environmental adaptation among peasants.

Alice Hamilton Prize for best article outside journal Environmental History

Charlotte Leib (Yale University), “Provisioning Parks in Petrochemical America: Origins and Legacies of the Land and Water Conservation Fund,” published in the Journal of Energy History.

The Alice Hamilton Committee praised Leib’s article as deeply researched and admirably interdisciplinary in its scholarly engagement. By exploring the Land and Water Conservation Fund’s (LWCF) economic ties to the petroleum industry and what she calls “petrocapital,” Leib shows that park provisioning and petroleum extraction became reinforcing activities, particularly after a 1968 amendment that funneled mineral leasing fees from oil extraction to the preservation of parks and open space. Leib thus points to the dangers that come with allowing industrial aims and activities to drive conservation policy. Moreover, by revealing that some of the intellectual forebears of the LWCF had historical ties to the eugenics movement, and that the implementation of LWCF imagined the middle-class white consumer as its primary beneficiary, Leib demonstrates that the LWCF resulted in an “unequally green” recreational landscape and the perpetuation of discriminatory racial and economic norms in American outdoor recreation. Leib’s multifaceted analysis carves new and exciting paths for American conservation history.

George Perkins Marsh Prize for best book in environmental history

Finalist: Joyce E. Chaplin, The Franklin Stove : An Unintended American Revolution (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)

Finalist: Jack Bouchard, Terra Nova : Food, Water, and Work in an Early Atlantic World (Yale University Press)

Winner: Marc Landry (University of New Orleans), Mountain Battery : The Alps, Water, and Power in the Fossil Fuel Age (Stanford University Press).

This book is an exemplar of environmental history drawing from the fields of geology, hydrology, politics, design, and engineering, within a framework that is defined by  complications of international boundaries. The book is grounded in original research across multiple archives and source categories and blends in rigorous and creative ways the methods and framing of environmental history and science & technology studies. 

A highly original analysis that uses a geophysical prism—the "alpine damscape"—to rethink both European history and energy history. Although the histories are saturated in coal through the centrality of the Industrial Revolution, Landry reveals how hydropower converted from Alpine waterways, the titular mountain battery, powered multiple nation-building and war-making projects.

In meticulously researched and narrated chapters exploring decision-makers in France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and more, Landry offers a new take on the global history of electrification, what boosters dubbed “white coal.” Revealing the intersections of key energy regimes, the book pushes against the technological determinist narratives that often accompany accounts of energy transitions into the 21st century. 

The Public Outreach Project Award

Winner: Bob Reinhardt

Bob Reinhardt an associate professor at Boise State University. Reinhardt's project, "Atlas of Drowned Towns," spans multiple fields—from digital and public history to environmental history and the history of the US West—and serves as a model for other projects aimed at understanding the social, political, cultural, and environmental implications of large-scale infrastructure projects. Throughout this project, Reinhardt prioritizes public outreach in both process (community outreach events to design the project and community archiving and engagement events that continue the project’s evolution) and product (a database and website to connect with different audiences and encourage public participation). The project brings environmental history *to* the public—by introducing topics such as river development and concepts like human-nature relationships—and does environmental history *with* the public--by inviting communities to share and interpret their artifacts about and experiences of displacement.

Lisa Mighetto Distinguished Service Award

Winners: Mark Hersey and Stephen Brain

Mark Hersey and Stephen Brain have provided invaluable service to ASEH (and I’ll add the Forest History Society) as the editors of Environmental History. Throughout, they have gone out of their way to respond to editors, authors, and reviewers with clear and prompt assistance.  Both have taken valuable time out of their own research agendas to support the broader research work of our community. 

ASEH has been very lucky to have them at the helm of Environmental History. They successfully steered the journal through a global pandemic, a transition from Oxford to University of Chicago Press, and a switch from Scholar One to Editorial Manager.

They created new initiatives within the journal to promote equity and inclusion as well as more submissions from junior scholars. They mentored associate editors and supported their work.  They expanded the journal's global reach.

Mark and Stephen are "on call" for the journal seemingly all the time. They never complain, but always ask what more they can do to help. They have been not only committed to intellectual rigor, but have brought kindness to the publishing process.

Distinguished Scholar Award

Winner: Gregg Mitman

Gregg Mitman is one of the most inspiring scholars in environmental history. He has innovated in both themes and methods, bridging the history of medicine, environmental history, and STS. His work has brought the human body into environmental history while engaging critically with class and race, without being anthropocentric. His co-edited volume Thinking with Animals exemplifies this. Gregg has also challenged academic practice through powerful films and digital environmental history projects. He is known for his generosity toward colleagues and students, as well as his commitment to social and environmental justice.

Gregg has received numerous fellowships and awards from prestigious institutions, including the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Humanities Center. More recently, he was awarded the highly competitive European Research Council Advanced Grant (ERC ADG) for his project FRAGMENTS OF THE FOREST, which examines disease ecologies and changing landscapes in West Africa.

Gregg is also an accomplished filmmaker. His documentary The Land Beneath Our Feet (2016)—which intertwines archival footage from a 1926 Harvard expedition to Liberia with a young Liberian man’s journey through personal and collective memories of war—won several prizes. Gregg has also received the title of Knight Commander, Humane Order of African Redemption, from the President of Liberia. This is one of Liberia’s oldest and most prestigious honors, acknowledging Gregg’s sustained work supporting public health and uncovering the legacies of colonialism and capitalism in West Africa. This recognition is of crucial significance for the entire environmental history community. It shows how civil society and institutions value scholarship deeply committed to social and environmental justice. The honor also testifies to a form of scholarship that does not follow academic fashions but remains devoted to a place and its communities through a decade of research and dissemination—one of the most important lessons Gregg offers us.

Equally remarkable is his exceptional generosity. He is always available to advise students and colleagues. Gregg is a true pioneer across diverse—yet often siloed—fields. We cannot imagine a more deserving candidate than Gregg Mitman for the Distinguished Scholar Award.