William San Martín is an interdisciplinary historian working at the intersections of History, Science & Technology Studies (STS), and Environmental Governance Studies.
His current research focuses on global nitrogen governance with special attention to the rise of nitrogen science and sustainable development policy in the Global South. He specializes in the science-policy interface, earth-system governance, international development, technology and the human environment, and environmental justice and inequalities.
William is a native from Chile, where he received his B.A. (2006) and M.A. (2011) in History from the Universidad Católica de Chile. He received his Ph.D. in History (Latin American and World History) at the University of California Davis in 2017. Prior to joining WPI, he was a Visiting Scholar and a Postdoctoral Associate, jointly affiliated with the program of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) and with the History Section at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Before focusing his attention on contemporary environmental issues, William worked on questions regarding race equity, slavery, legal systems, and state formation in the 18th and 19th centuries across the North Atlantic and the Americas. Today, he integrates many of the discussions from colonial, postcolonial and development studies, critical race theory, history and sociology of state formation, and the social history of law and policy into his teaching and scholarship.
William is the recipient of the 2019 EHCA Prize for Interdisciplinary Research in Environmental History awarded by the Environmental History Research Cluster Austria. He is co-editor, along with Emily O'Gorman, Mark Carey, and Sandra Swart, of the Routledge Handbook of Environmental History (under contract), and author of various peer-reviewed articles and book chapters published in fields including history of science and technology, political ecology, environmental studies, sustainable development, and Latin American studies. He currently curates the collections "Technology and Expertise" and "Histories across Species" for Arcadia, the online, peer-reviewed journal of the Rachel Carson Center and the European Society of Environmental History.
During January-June 2021, William is in residence as a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment & Society, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Munich, Germany.
He currently serves as an elected member for the Nominations Committee of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS), as a member of the Committee on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity of the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH), and as a Digital Communications Manager for the International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations (ICEHO).
At WPI, he has served as a faculty advisor for Interactive Qualifying Projects at the Costa Rica - Monteverde Project Center. He serves as a member of the steering committee for the Latin American Studies Initiative and teaches history and global studies courses with an emphasis on science and technology, the human environment, and environmental justice and inequalities.
