David Moon appointed Honorary Professor

We are very pleased to announce that David Moon has been appointed as Honorary Professor at UCL SSEES. David is a specialist on Russian, Eurasian, and transnational environmental history.

He studied at the universities of Newcastle and Birmingham in the UK and Leningrad State University in the USSR. He has held posts at the universities of Texas at Austin, USA, Newcastle, Strathclyde in Glasgow, Durham, and York in the UK, and visiting positions at, amongst others, the Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Rachel Carson Center at LMU, Munich, and, most recently, Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan.

David’s new book, The American Steppes: The Unexpected Russian Roots of Great Plains Agriculture, 1870s-1930s (CUP, 2020), explores transfers of people, plants, sciences and techniques from the Eurasian steppes to the Great Plains of the USA. His previous book, The Plough that Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700-1914 (OUP, 2013), was awarded the Alexander Nove Prize. He is currently co-editing a volume based on field trips to various locations in Russia entitled Place and Nature: Essays in Russian Environmental History (White Horse Press, 2020/21). Earlier, he worked on the history of the peasantry and serfdom, and is the author of The Russian Peasantry, 1600-1930: The World the Peasants Made (1999). His research has been supported by awards from the Leverhulme Trust, the AHRC, the British Academy, and other funders.