William San Martín (He/Him/El) is Assistant Professor of Global Environmental Science, Technology, and Governance in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and a Research Fellow at the Earth Systems Governance Project at Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

He is an interdisciplinary scholar of earth-systems sciences and global environmental governance trained in history and science & technology studies (STS). His work focuses on environmental justice; Latin America & the Global South; and science, technology & the human environment. 

William is a former Fulbright Scholar (2011-2015); a Visiting Scholar and a Postdoctoral Associate jointly affiliated with the program of Science, Technology, and Society and the History Section at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2016-2018); and a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany (2021). 

William's main research examines socio-ecological conflicts and knowledge-policy responses emerging from changes in the global nitrogen cycle resulting from the increasing use of synthetic fertilizers, among other sources, since the 1950s. His research asks questions about the imbalances of knowledge in global nitrogen governance with particular attention to issues of expertise, sustainable development policy, and inequalities in the Global South. He examines the unequal place of expert communities, science-policy interface frameworks, and research and governmental institutions in the governance of biogeochemical processes on earth—as processes linked to lasting issues of (under)development and colonialism. 

He is currently a Co-PI of the NSF's Using the Rules of Life to Address Societal Challenges Grant: Co-Producing Knowledge, Biotechnologies and Practices to Enhance Biological Nitrogen Fixation for Sustainable Agriculture ($2.67 million, Georgia Tech and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Award 2319430). Working with small-scale farmers, agricultural extensionists, and scientists in the United States and Chile, the project uses participatory research-action methodologies and scrutinizes co-production strategies to strengthen agroecological practice at a regional and (sub)national scale, reducing dependency on synthetic fertilizers, and informing debates about knowledge co-production methods in STS, environmental studies, and sustainability sciences.

Born and raised in Chile, William has vast experience in policy-oriented research and building collaborations with international organizations and communities. He received his B.A. (2006) and M.A. (2011) in History from the Universidad Católica de Chile and a Ph.D. in Latin American and World History at the University of California Davis (2017) with a focus on international agricultural development, U.S. - Latin America relations, science diplomacy, and environmental sustainability. William has conducted research in Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, and the United States.

Across academic projects and institutional collaborations, William is interested in the multiple forms issues of rights, justice, and democracy take in the formation of global environmental issues. 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, history and sociology of state formation, and the social history of law and policy into his teaching and scholarship. In doing so, he aims to highlight areas that tend to be overlooked in modern scholarly and public environmental governance debates, such as political economy, inequalities, violence, and colonialism. 

William is co-editor, along with Emily O'Gorman, Mark Carey, and Sandra Swart, of the Routledge Handbook of Environmental History (Routledge, 2023), 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 for Environment and Society.

William is a contributing author to Chapter 29 (“A Governance Framework for Better Nitrogen Management”) of the International Nitrogen Assessment (INA), the first global assessment addressing issues at the intersection of nitrogen science and governance. Set for publication in 2024, INA is sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and aims to provide policy and scientific advice to the recently established UNEP-Working Group on Nitrogen and UN member nations. William is also a Steering Council Member for the North American Chapter of the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI), the primary scientific organization working on building partnerships and collaborations to assess local, regional, and global impacts of nitrogen pollution. He is also currently chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leadership Committee of the American Society for Environmental History, a former elected member of the Association for Environmental Studies & Sciences' Nominations Committee, and an affiliated researcher at NUDISUR, an international network of scholars dedicated to decolonial approaches to knowledge production and participatory, community-engaged research.

At WPI,  he is an affiliated faculty with the MS Community Climate Adaptation, the International & Global Studies, and the Great Problems Seminar Programs, and a Steering Committee Member of WPI's Latin American & Caribbean Studies Initiative. He has served as a faculty advisor for Interactive Qualifying Projects working with local organizations at the intersection of sustainable development, environmental conservation, and climate resilience at WPI's Costa Rica - Monteverde and Cuenca - Ecuador Project Centers. 

Visit Digital WPI to view student projects and research advised by Professor San Martín
For courses taught at WPI and MIT, visit Professor San Martín’s personal web site