DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

Biography

Hugh Milner is a doctoral student in History and a Mellon Cluster Fellow in Science Studies. He received his BA from Oberlin College, majoring in Environmental Studies and Greek Language and Literature. He then gained an MA in Medieval Studies from Western Michigan University. In his Master’s thesis at Western Michigan, Hugh explored relationships between humans and the environment along the Wadden Sea Coast in northern Europe. His work studied how medieval texts imagined the natural world, particularly coastal and wetland environments and the natural disasters that struck their society. He also examined how land was valued and modified, particularly through water management infrastructure like dikes and mills, which served to protect and increase the quantified value extracted from the landscape. His continued research on the medieval and early modern landscapes and the patterns of movement, activity, and extraction within them will involve both textual and GIS analyses.