Themes

As part of our mission to support innovation in historical research, The Davis Center organizes its initiatives around a new theme every several years. By bringing together scholars across disciplines around a range of programming and events, we promote new ways of studying history’s most pressing topics.

The Shelby Cullom Davis Center theme for 2022-2024 is Environment and Climate.

Changing awareness—and alarm—about human civilization’s impact on the environment and climate has shaped a dynamic field of historical writing. In 2022-24, the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University seeks applications from scholars working on questions related to environment and climate in an historical framework, in any period of human history, and all geographical areas.

We welcome projects that explore the mutual influence of social and physical environments, including projects that foreground the role of the environment in shaping human societies and those that highlight the role of humans in changing climatic and environmental conditions. Particular themes may include (but are not limited to) the role of technology, migration, agriculture, justice, health, colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, political ideology, war, law, frontiers, property regimes, demographics, natural disasters, conservation and sustainability movements, aesthetic conceptions of natural and built landscapes, and the intellectual history of issues of environment and climate. We are particularly interested in projects that explore the intersection between histories of the environment and climate on the one hand, and histories of race, gender, and/or inequality on the other.

Upcoming Theme

Truth and Information

Past Themes

Throughout our history, we have explored a diverse range of themes, from Risk and Fortune to Corruption to the History of Education. Learn more about our past themes.

Request Information

The Manager, Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies
Department of History
129 Dickinson Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544-1017, U.S.A.