Events & Public Talks

I speak regularly to university and general audiences about the Russian and American Arctic, what whales teach us about ethics, and the personal & historical lessons that come from working with sled dogs. I also support writers & scholars interested in communicating their work to a range of publics through writing classes for academics and community members.

For speaking engagements, please contact Authors Outside

Select Recorded Events

Upcoming Public Events

October 30, 10am: “Experimental Histories,” panel at the University College London Anthropocene Histories (online)

October 30, 6pm: “Stories Across Species,” Cross-STS Talk, History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society, MIT (in person)

December 11-12: "Global History, National History and Planetary History," panels at Sciences Po, Paris (in person) 

April 1-3, 2025: The Shapiro Initiative on Environment and Society Lecture and Masterclass, University of Chicago

2024 Events

  • January 22, “Dams that Save: Law, Beavers, and the Making of the Yukon River,” Public Talk, Utah State University Logan (in person)

  • January 30, 12:00 EST: Looking North - Alternative Approaches to Landscape and Energy, in Conversation with artist Mhairi Killin (virtual registration required)

  • February 5, 4:30pm: “Dams that Save,” talk at the Ecotheories Colloquium, Princeton University (in person)

  • March 21: Conservation and Development in Alaska History, with Austin Ahmasuk, Jim Magadanz, and Courtney Carothers, part of the Critical Issues Series, Anchorage Museum (in person & virtual)

  • May 2: Maya K. Peterson Memorial Lecture, University of California, Santa Cruz (in person)

  • May 18-20: Events at the Étonnants Voyageurs Book Festival, Saint Malo, France

  • September 19, 7:00pm: Book discussion with Laura Marris, author of The Age of Loneliness, RiffRaff, Providence

  • October 10: “Dams that Save,” Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, University of Michigan

  • October 24, 4pm: “Environmental Guesswork,” panel discussion with Jen Rose Smith and Hi’ilei Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart, Cogut Institute for the Humanities, Brown University (in person)

2023 Events

  • February 21: “Of Islands and Whales,” talk for Advaya’s Kinship course (virtual, registration required)

  • February 23: ““Arctic Energy Before Petroleum: Or, What Whales Can Tell Us About Writing History,” talk at the Laurelmead Community, Providence RI (in person)

  • February 27: “The Reindeer at the End of the World,” (virtual) University of Washington

  • March 7: Knight Distinguished Lecture, Washington University (in person)

  • March 18: Faith Communities for a Sustainable Future (FaCT) Talk (virtual)

  • April 13, noon: By Faculty for Faculty lecture, Brown University (in person)

  • April 16, 6pm: In conversation with Erica Berry, author of Wolfish, Twenty Stories Bookstore (in person)

  • May 1: “Do Whales Judge Us: Inspeices History and Ethics,” Provost’s Lecture Series, Virginia Commonwealth University (in person)

  • May 9: “History from the Dogsled: Animals, Climates and the Stakes of Telling the Past,'“ Annual History Graduate Student Association Lecture, University of Colorado, Boulder (in person)

  • May 11: “The Reindeer at the End of the World,” public talk, Elk River Arts & Lectures, Livingston Montana (in person)

  • May 18, 6pm: In conversation with Peggy O’Donnell Heffington, author of Without Children, Twenty Stories Bookstore (in person)

  • August 3, 6pm: In conversation with Elizabeth Rush, author of The Quickening, Twenty Stories Bookstore (in person)

  • September 19, 5pm EST: In conversation Hannah Stowe, author of Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea, Point Reyes Books (virtual)

  • October 3, 7:30pm: "The Reindeer at the End of the World," Public Lecture, Bowdoin College (in person)

  • October 20: LaFeber-Silbey Lecture, “History from the Dogsled: The Yukon and the Stakes of Telling the Past,” Cornell University (in person)

2022 Events

  • January 13: Melville-Nelles-Hoffmann Lecture in Environmental History, York University (virtual)

  • February 3: Anthropocene Working Group, History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge

  • April 20, noon: Placing Histories of Energy, virtual Environmental History Week panel with Victor Seow, Liz Chatterjee, Diana Montaño, Jennifer Eaglin, and On Barak

  • April 21 3:30pm: “The Reindeer and the End of the World: Apocalypse, Climate, and Soviet Dreams,” virtual talk at the University of British Columbia Centre for European Studies

  • April 22 4pm: “The Reindeer and the End of the World: Apocalypse, Climate, and Soviet Dreams,” live lecture at Brown University’s Re-Examining Conservation Symposium, Martinos Auditorium (virtual options also)

  • June 2, 3pm EST/noon PST: “Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: A Tribute to Barry Lopez,” virtual event hosted by Point Reyes Books and featuring John Freeman, Robert Macfarlane, and others

  • August 25, 7pm: Talking Shop, Toolik Lake Field Station, Alaska (in person)

  • August 31st, 8pm: What is a Historian Doing in the Brooks Range? Arctic Interagency Visitor Center, Coldfoot AK (in person)

  • September 5, 5pm: Postcards from Floating Coast, Wrangell Mountains Center, McCarthy, Alaska (in-person)

  • September 16, 9:00am: “Of Ecologies & Possibilities: The Dawn of Everything as seen from the Yukon River,” opening talk for the “Writing Global Histories Today” symposium on The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, with David Wengrow, Zoe Todd, and others. Brown University (in person and virtual).

  • September 27, 7pm: Brooklyn Book Festival panel on Environmental Storytelling, with Morgan Talty, Leigh Newman, Pitchaya Sudbanthad, and Kerri Arsenault, at The Center for Fiction (in person).

  • October 6: “History from a Dogsled: The Yukon and the Stakes of Telling the Past,” Keynote for the Alaska Historical Society, Anchorage Museum. In person and virtual.

  • October 16, 5pm: “The Art of the Fact,” with Kerri Arsenault and Rob Newton, opening for the Silent Springs: Global Histories of Pesticides and our Toxic World conference, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, Germany.

  • October 20: “Seen From a Floating Coast: New Perspectives on Environmental History,” workshop on Floating Coast, Sciences Po Grenoble, France.

  • October 21: “Seen From a Floating Coast: New Perspectives on Environmental History,” workshop on Floating Coast, EHESS BD, Paris, France.

  • November 4, 12:00: “Do Whales Judge Us? Interspecies History and Ethics,” Douglas Pimlott Memorial Lecture, University of Toronto (virtual)

  • November 4, 6:00pm: Moderator for “Gather. Make. Sustain: An Evening Panel Discussion Celebrating Indigenous Land-Based Practitioners,” featuring Robin Wall Kimmerer, Elizabeth Perry, Rashad Young and Keely Curliss, Brown University, Rhode Island (in person)

  • November 19, noon: “Global Souths/Native Norths” panel with Matthew P. Johnson, Owain Lawson, and Jen Rose Smith, University of Chicago (in person)

  • November 21: “The Reindeer at the End of the World: Climate, Apocalypse, and Soviet Dreams,” public talk at Luther College, Decorah Iowa (in person)

2021 Events

  • February 4: “The Value of Blubber: Soviet Whaling and the Cold War," Centre d'histoire, SciencesPo, Paris

  • February 19: “Re-imagining Russia,” discussion with Kate Brown, The Havighurst Center

  • February 23: “Portrait of a Summer on Fire: Covid, Climate Change, and the Ties that Bind Us,” Oregon State Pandemic as Portal Lecture Series

  • March 10, 1pm EST: Floating Coast reading and discussion, Eric Zencey Prize Ceremony

  • March 18: The Russian and Soviet North Pacific, with Ilya Vinkovetsky, The Harriman Institute, Columbia University

  • March 24, 7pm EST: Discussion of The Seed Keeper, with author Diane Wilson, Twenty Stories Bookstore

  • April 19: Environmental History Week talk, University of Pennsylvania

  • April 22: Keynote, “The Reindeer and the End of the World: Apocalypse, Climate, and Soviet Dreams” at “Climate in Context: Historical Precedents and the Unprecedented,” UT Austin

  • May 4, 3:00pm EDT: “The Reindeer at the End of the World,” 2021 Clark Lecture, University of Oregon

  • May 19: Animating Pasts & Landscapes, Emergence Magazine Writing Beyond the Environment (registration required)

  • June 4: Drinking with Historians virtual happy hour discussion of Floating Coast

  • June 18, 1pm: Book talk with Dara McAnulty, author of Diary of a Young Naturalist, Lost City Bookstore, DC

  • July 15: Coastal Studies Reading Group discussion of Floating Coast

  • September 1: “Do Whales Judge Us: Interspecies History and Ethics,” Institut for Sociologi, Miljø- og Erhvervsøkonom, SDU Denmark (virtual)

  • September 30: Carnegie Fellows Panel on Rethinking Rights, with Cecilia Menjivar and Jeffrey Kosseff, moderated by Azmat Khan

  • October 14: "Do Whales Judge Us?: Interspecies History and Ethics,” (virtual), Rutgers University Center for Cultural Analysis

  • October 18 4:30-6pm CST: “The Reindeer and the End of the World: Apocalypse, Climate, and Soviet Dreams,” (virtual) talk at Northwestern University, Klopsteg Lecture Series

  • October 24 2pm EST: Boston Book Festival panel, “After "Nature Writing": New Approaches to Writing about the Environment,” with Tony Perry, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Kate Brown, and Kerri Arsenault. Co-hosted by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, Brown University

  • October 27: “Floating Coast” (virtual) talk at The Humanities and Our Natural World series, Hall Center for the Humanities, University of Kansas

  • November 4, 1pm EST: “Do Whales Judge Us: Interspecies History and Ethics,” (virtual) Stanford CREEES

  • November 12: “Do Whales Judge Us: Interspecies History and Ethics,” Public Talk (virtual), University of Oslo

  • November 29, 2pm EST: 5x15 Granta Launch Event: Should We Have Stayed Home?

  • December 2, 4pm: “The Reindeer and the End of the World: Apocalypse, Climate, and Soviet Dreams,” Lafayette College

2020 Events

2019 Events