Department of History congratulates Dr. Bradley Skopyk on winning the 2012 American Society for Environmental Studies Rachel Carson Prize for the best dissertation in environmental history. Only three students from outside the U.S. have ever won this prize, and they have all been from York’s Graduate History Program: Matthew Evenden in 2001, Liza Piper in 2006 and now Bradley Skopyk. Nor has any university ever had students win this prize more than twice. Dr. Skopyk’s excellent work is bringing great prestigious to our program!
Dr. Skopyk’s dissertation, entitled “Undercurrents to Conquest: The Shifting Terrain of Indigenous Agriculture in Colonial Tlaxcala, Mexico,” was supervised by the late Elinor Melville and Richard Hoffmann. Dr. Skopyk defended his dissertation in December 2010. He is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Anthropological Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico. Working with anthropologists and archaeologists in the Teotihuacan Project, which explores the environmental history of the Teotihuacan Valley during the last 1,300 years, Dr. Skopyk is investigating environmental processes and changes initiated by Spanish colonization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Winning this award for the third time in a row is a significant accomplishment for our program. Please join me in congratulating Bradley, and our colleagues who work in environmental history.