Thomas (Tom) Robertson

Ph.D. in History, Univ. of WI Madison, 2005
B.A. in Political Science, Williams College, 1989

TEACHING

I have taught at the college level roughly twenty years. I went to a small liberal arts college that encouraged critical thinking and global engagement. My favorite professors mixed lively discussions and deep engagement with big arguments with skill building in writing and oral communication. In addition to teaching in the U.S., I ran the Fulbright office in Nepal for several years.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

I am an environmental historian deeply interested in environmental change and social justice. I research two main subjects: the environmental dimensions of US empire, and the history of environmental changes and conservation in Nepal. I got interested in these subjects through experiences in South Asia—first as a study abroad student and later as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. I have lived in Nepal over 12 of the last 30 years, and I love speaking Nepali. I have written about the US environmental movement, WWII and the Cold War, international development, airplanes, and national parks.

My 2012 book The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of the Environmental Movement (Rutgers University Press) examined the international dimensions of the US environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as some of its blindspots. More recently, with NSF funding, I have researched the environment dimensions of US Cold War development projects in Nepal, with particular focus on Indigenous communities. I am working on a history of Chitwan national park.

CURRENT PROJECTS

• A synthetic book on the role of the environment in US foreign relations from World War II to the present, focusing on how the US military, US development agencies, and the US economy shaped environments overseas and environmental thinking, but also how nature shaped US international activities.

• A book-length study of environmental change and conservation in Nepal from World War II to the present, focusing on malaria eradication and the early days of “fortress conservation” in national parks, but also Nepal’s innovative turn to community-based natural resource management, including its famous community forestry programs.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

“Earth”, in Karl Jacoby and Susan Johnson, eds., “A Book of Common Places: Keywords for a More Than Human World,” (Essays inspired by the work of William Cronon), forthcoming.

“Backwards Development”: Malaria Control, Land Reform, and teh Dangaura Tharu in Nepal’s Dang Valley in the 1960s, Studies in Nepali History and Society 30:1, June 2025.

Environmental Justice in Nepal: Origins, Struggles and Prospects, Routledge Press, 2024 (co-edited volume with Jonathan London and Jagannath Adhikari).

Transplanting Modernity?: New Histories of Poverty, Development, and Environment, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023 (co-edited with Jenny Leigh Smith).

Nature at War: American Environments and World War II, with Richard Tucker, Peter Mansoor, and Nick Breyfogle, Cambridge University Press, 2020.

“DDT and the Cold War: American Social and Environmental Engineering in the Rapti Valley (Chitwan) of Nepal,” Journal of American History, March 2018. Winner of the Binkley-Stephenson Award for Best JAH Article of 2018.

The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism, Rutgers University Press, 2012.

40+ articles in Nepali newspapers such as the Nepali Times and Kathmandu Post, some in English, some Nepali. For an example, see The Insect that Changed Nepal’s History, Conservation at the Crossroads, and Kathmandu’s ‘Flash Floods” are 4 Decades in the Making.

“Mitho Lekhai ” – My Nepali language videos on writing non-fiction.

“Writing Journeys” – Series I edited in The Record-Nepal featuring Nepali non-fiction writers talking about writing.