Bell Travel Grants

Recent winners of the Bell Travel Grant award include several graduate students working on doctoral dissertations, and others pursuing research on a variety of environmental history topics:

Jack Hanly is a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He researched the rise of the U.S. environmental movement as it intersected with and challenged architecture, real estate, and infrastructure development during the 1960s and 70s.

Sumin Myung is a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University. His dissertation examines the role of U.S. foresters forest scientists in the institutionalization of scientific forestry in postwar South Korea.

Nate Otjen is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University. He used FHS resources to research how draft animals participated in the extraction of longleaf pine for logging and turpentine industries in the U.S. South during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Samuel Hawksford White is a Postgraduate Researcher at the School of Humanities and Energy and Environment Institute, University of Hull, UK. His research looked at the function of photography in communicating environmental degradation during the Depression and the New Deal, as well as identifying technical and theoretical approaches to visualizing flood and erosion control measures in American landscape photography.

Thomas Kaye is a PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham, UK, and a part of the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR). His dissertation is "Reading the Grain: The Forestry of Modern & Contemporary American Literature."

Andrew Bell is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship Postdoctoral Researcher at Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po. He visited FHS to research the post-World War I seeding effort to rebuild Western Europe’s forests with Douglas fir trees.

Ian Snider is a PhD candidate in Forest Resources at Clemson University. He used FHS resources to construct an in-depth literature review on the history of draft animal logging in Appalachia and how it informs Artisan Forestry’s future.

Bert Geyer is a lecturer in the Art and Design Department at Chicago State University. He visited FHS to research the history of the Nebraska National Forest, the Bessey Tree Nursery, and early tree planting efforts in Nebraska.

Kerri Dean is a PhD candidate in American History, with minor fields of Environmental History and Museum Studies, at Claremont Graduate University in California. Her dissertation examined how the changing values attached to the Christmas tree in the United States have reflected shifts in American culture and society.

Tatiana Konrad is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her project traced the cultural history of climate change as reflected in literature, looking at transformations of the environment as well as of socio-political and eco-cultural thought since the Industrial Revolution.

Kelly Kay, an assistant professor of Geography at UCLA, conducted research for a project looking at the restructuring of the U.S. forest products industry, particularly with regard to ownership structures. This included changes such as the conversion to Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), and the selloff of land or processing facilities.

Emily Knox, a visiting assistant professor of Landscape Architecture at Auburn University, conducted research on the history of livestock grazing on U.S. Forest Service lands. She investigated how early grazing practices, as well as regulations, varied in response to ecological conditions.

Jennifer Dunn is a postdoctoral researcher at Michigan Technological University. Her research focuses on the history of forest management policies of the national forests in Montana during Orville Daniels' tenure as forest supervisor. Daniels was supervisor of the Bitterroot National Forest from 1970 to 1974, during the clearcutting controversy, and was also a key player in challenging the long-time wildland fire policy. He then served on the Lolo National Forest from 1974 to 1994.

Kendra Smith-Howard, Associate Professor at University at Albany, State University of New York, conducted research for a book project tentatively entitled “The Dirty History of Cleaning Up.” The book tracks the history of changing cleaning technologies and industries in the United States, including the shifting environmental footprint of disposable paper products used for cleaning, such as paper towels, disposable handkerchiefs, and disposable diapers.