This presentation will provide a long perspective on the importance of energy transitions in human history and underscore the role of ingenuity, innovation, and adaptation in the past – and future – success of our species.
Kyle Harper is the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty, Professor of Classics and Letters, at his alma mater, the University of Oklahoma. He is also a Fractal Faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute, and in 2023-24 the holder of an annual Chair at the Collège de France (chaire “Avenir Commun Durable”). Harper has been a Guggenheim Fellow and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow in addition to a Junior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks. Harper is a historian whose work tries to integrate the natural sciences into the study of the human past. His main research interests include the history of infectious disease and climate change and their impact on human societies. More broadly, he writes on the history of humans as agents of ecological change and asks how we can approach questions such as biodiversity, health, and environmental sustainability from a historical perspective.
He is the author of four books. His first book, Slavery in the Late Roman World; From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality; The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire; and Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History.
