Edmund Russell

Edmund Russell

Edmund Russell

Phone: 785-864-9474
Email: eprussell@ku.edu
Curriculum Vita

Edmund Russell is the Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Distinguished Professor of United States History (B.A. Stanford 1980; Ph.D. Michigan 1993).

Russell's research synthesizes environmental history, American history, global history, history of technology, and science. His first major project focused on the environmental history of warfare. It culminated in a pair of books (War and Nature, Cambridge University Press, and Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, co-edited with Richard Tucker, Oregon State University Press). His second major project focused on evolutionary history, or the study of ways in which people have altered the traits of populations of non-human species and how these alterations have circled back to change human experience. He has published one book on this topic (Evolutionary History, Cambridge University Press) and has another under contract. A third area of interest is neurohistory, which draws on ideas from neuroscience to help us understand the past. He co-organized the first conference on neurohistory, edited proceedings of the conference, and collaborated on experiments with neuroscientists. Russell's research has received prizes in environmental history, history of technology, and history of science. He has received three teaching awards.

Russell is co-editor of the Studies in Environment and History series for Cambridge University Press, distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, life member of Clare Hall at Cambridge University, and extraordinary member of the Human Sciences Center of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. He has been a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich and a visiting scholar at Cambridge University. He has served as conference program chair for the American Society for Environmental History, book review editor for Environmental History, executive council member for the Society for the History of Technology, and member of the United States National Committee for the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science.