Mark Carey

Mark Carey specializes in environmental history and the history of science. His research has focused on several topics: climate change, natural disasters, glacier-society interactions, mountaineering, water, and health/medicine. His goal is to understand dynamic interactions among people, knowledge systems, environmental perceptions, and natural processes.  Though he has written most extensively on the Peruvian Andes, he also does international comparative history and has published on Central America, the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean.

Carey's interdisciplinary research links many fields - from history and geography to glaciology and climatology. He has received grants and fellowships from sources as diverse as the National Science Foundation, American Meteorological Society, Social Science Research Council, Fulbright, and the Inter-American Foundation. Carey earned his PhD in history from the University of California, Davis, and held a Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellowship in the geography department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Carey's book, In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society, was published in 2010 by Oxford University Press. He also has many other publications.  One of his articles, "The History of Ice: How Glaciers Became an Endangered Species," won the Leopold-Hidy Prize for the best article in the journal Environmental History during 2007. He also has articles in several journals, including Osiris, Hispanic American Historical Review, Latin American Research Review, Radical History Review, Global and Planetary Change, Environmental History, and Revista de Historia, in addition to chapters in edited books.

An important part of Carey's research is the involvement of undergraduate students. Thanks to grants from the National Science Foundation, Carey has been able to give students valuable research opportunities on a variety of topics over the years -- from field work in Peru, to library and web research, to website design for disseminating research results.  Carey's courses in the Honors College also provide unique opportunities, such as an upcoming Spring 2012 course on Climate and Culture in the Americas, which will correspond with a May 24, 2012 conference on "Indigenous People, Climate Change, and Environmental Knowledge."

Carey currently has several ongoing research projects: an environmental history book examining human-glacier interactions worldwide; a book on the history of mountaineering in South America; and a collaborative, three-year National Science Foundation grant on climate change and water management in Peru with glaciologist Bryan Mark at Ohio State University, geographer Jeffrey Bury at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and bio-geographer Kenneth Young at the University of Texas, Austin.

Mark Carey conducting research at Lake Palcacocha, Cordillera Blanca, Peru.