Robert Wilson

Contact Information

Brief Biography

Robert Wilson is a geographer whose research interests lie in the areas of environmental history, historical geography, and the history of environmental thought and policy. He is especially interested in the historical geography of social conflicts associated with the management of protected areas in the United States and Canada. Currently, he is completing a book titled Seeking Refuge: An Environmental History of the Pacific Flyway. The book examines challenges associated with the management of migratory birds, and the wildlife refuges they depend on, in western North America during the twentieth century. Many of these refuges are found in landscapes dominated by irrigated, industrial agriculture, which has made managing them for the benefit of wildlife extremely difficult. Some of his other projects include histories of wildlife conservation in the American West during the Second World War and the complicated relationship between federal irrigation projects and internment camps for Japanese Americans during the same period. He is also completing a study on the links between landscape and the body in Rachel Carson’s writings, particularly Silent Spring, one of the founding texts of American environmentalism.

Robert finished his PhD in geography at the University of British Columbia in 2003. In 2004-2005, he was at the Department of History and Philosophy at Montana State University—Bozeman completing a postdoctoral fellowship that explored the links between geography, environmental history, and the history of science and technology.

Environmental Research Areas

Environmental Courses

Selected Papers and Abstracts since 2000

• Birds on the Home Front: Wildlife Conservation in the Western United States During the Second World War, Robert Wilson, in War and the Environment, Christof Mauch and Charles Closman (eds.), Studies in International Environmental History series, Rowman & Littlefield (forthcoming), 2006.
• Landscapes of Promise and Betrayal: Homesteading and Japanese Internment in the Far West, Robert Wilson, 2006.
• Nature's Body: Rachel Carson and Hybrid Geographies, Robert Wilson, 2006.
• Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert Wilson, in Krech III, S., Merchant, C., and McNeill, J., (eds.). Encyclopedia of World Environmental History. New York: Berkshire/Routledge, 2004.
• Directing the Flow: Migratory Waterfowl, Scale and Mobility in Western North America, Robert M. Wilson, Environmental History, 7(2), pp. 247-266, April 2002.