Ruth Mostern

I am an interdisciplinary historian. I study the human past at large spatial scales and long temporal scales using methods that draw from environmental science and spatial information science alongside engagement with the historical record.

In addition to writing books and articles, I promote digital infrastructure for history, and I am the Project Director of the award-winning World Historical Gazetteer, a platform of tools, guides, publications, and content for linking knowledge about the past by indexing and integrating datasets of information about historical places.

I also advance institutional infrastructure for environmental, global, Asian, and digital history through service on numerous boards and as Director of the University of Pittsburgh World History Center.

My 2021 book The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History (Yale University Press), winner of the 2023 Joseph Levenson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, tracks the long history of the human relationship with water and soil, and the consequences, at times disastrous, of ecological transformations that resulted from human decisions. This work underlines how governments consistently ignored the dynamic interrelationships of the river's varied ecosystems--grasslands, riparian forests, wetlands, and deserts--and the ecological and cultural impacts of their policies. I am continuing to research the historical conjunction of erosion and empire in the Ordos region, a topic that I call, " A Shatterzone on an Ecotone."

As of 2023, I am actively working on two new book projects. One book, tentatively entitled Place: A Global History, explains why itineraries, gazetteers, and databases make lists of places that describe distinctive named locations as setting for human experience, centers of historical meaning, and often sites of struggles for power and control. 

The other book, tentatively entitled The Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Global Medieval Era, is a short volume introducing researchers and instructors to the climatic irregularly that spanned the centuries from about 950-1250 CE. The book will focus on cultural adaptations to climate change, arguing that diverse but comparable social responses to climate change were at the heart of a distinctive middle millennium of world history.

I welcome inquiries from graduate students who are interested in working with me on any of my areas of interest.