Faculty & Staff
Thomas B. Robertson
Assistant Professor
Office: Salisbury Laboratories, 234
Phone: +1-508-831-5871
Fax: +1-508-831-5932
tbr@wpi.edu
Related Information
- Courses Offered
- Environmental Studies Program
- International Studies Program
Educational Background
- B.A., Williams College, 1989
- M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999
- Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2005
- Post-Doctoral Fellow, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers University. 2005-06
Research & Teaching Interests
U.S. Environmental History; U.S. Foreign Relations; 20th Century U.S. History (for description of courses click on "courses offered" above)
IQP Advising Interests
natural resource management; biotechnology issues; competition for open space; conservation; other renewable energy; energy politics; solar energy; strategic materials; redevelopment of urban areas; demographic policies; effect of technology on social systems; international comparisons
social cost & social change; science & society studies; history; history of technology; history of science; foreign policy; economics in developing countries; technological transfer; appropriate technology; environmental law; policy & implementation. I have advised at the WPI Project Centers in Thailand (twice) and Costa Rica.
Research
I specialize in American environmental history, the history of American foreign relations, and twentieth-century America. I am particularly interested in American relations with the developing world. My research focuses on post-World War II American debates about population growth both at home and globally. I am also particularly interested in the history of Nepal and the role of American development projects there.
BOOK IN PROGRESS
The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism
(Rutgers University Press, 2011)
A historical examination of concern about global population growth within American environmental thought, The Malthusian Moment charts the surprising explosion of Malthusian thinking in the U.S. from 1945 to about 1975, then traces its just-as-surprising decline beginning in the mid-1970s.
CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECT
Developing International Development: American Rural Development Programs in Nepal 1950-1980
Examines U.S. overseas development programs during the Cold War by focusing on four case studies from Nepal—The Rapti Valley Development Project (1950s), Malaria Eradication (1960s), Land Reform (1960s), and Population and Environment Programs (1970s). Emphasizes American and Nepali perspectives. (NSF Science and Technology Studies Scholar’s Award, 2010-2011)
RECENT PRESENTATIONS
“40 Years Since Earth Day: New Directions in Historiography,” Roundtable Panel, American Society for Environmental History, March 14, 2010.
“Placing Humans in Nature: American Environmentalists and Global Population Control,” Association of American Studies, Washington DC, November 5-8, 2009.
“The Country that DDT Made: USAID, DDT, and Nepal,” Society for Historians of Technology, Pittsburgh, Oct. 2009.