Professor
Department of History
Chair, Geography Graduate Group
The University of California at Davis
Lake Tahoe, Nov. 2018
Research Interests:
Political Ecology; Environmental
History; Colonialism;
Pastoral Societies and Arid Lands; Middle East and North
Africa;
Environmental
Change and Public Health; Ethnoveterinary Medicine
Why Veterinary Medicine, Geography
and then History?
- I went to veterinary school to be a better
geographer and to be able to work with nomads
and their
livestock while conducting geographical fieldwork for my
dissertation. Listening
carefully to the nomads led me to research the
deep histories of stories told by colonial powers
about the environment
and environmental change over time. The resulting
historical geography/
political ecology is often thought of as
(critical) environmental history. I practiced
veterinary
medicine for several years with a variety of patients from
cats & dogs to sea birds.
For more info, see https://gdb.ucdavis.edu/blog/professor-spotlight-winter-2022-diana-k-davis