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 authors & academics interested in communicating their work to a range of publics through the Environmental Storytelling Studio at Brown University.

To request an in person or virtual speaking engagement, please contact Authors Outside, or view my Speaking Profile.

Select Recorded Events

The Environmental Storytelling Studio

  • TESS supports writers who bring science and story together to help us understand our changing world. From training authors to guest-editing at Emergence magazine, our goal is to diversify the stories we tell about our environments.

Upcoming Public Events

  • 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)

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)

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