Robert Wilson is associate professor of geography in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and he has research interests in historical geography, environmental history, animal history and geographies, and environmental activism. His book Seeking Refuge: Birds and Landscapes of the Pacific Flyway examined the fate of migratory birds in western North America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; conflicts among irrigated agriculture, sport hunters, and bird conservationists over the birds’ habitat; and efforts to carve out spaces in the North American West for the birds’ survival. In his recent work, Professor Wilson continues to do research on conservation and environmentalism by studying the evolution of the climate movement in the United States and Canada over the past five years and the coalition of groups and interests that comprise the movement. In addition to his research, Professor Wilson has also served as chair of the Association of American Geographers’ Historical Geography Specialty Group and is the host of the New Books in Geography podcast.
RCC Research Project: Forging the Climate Movement
Selected Publications:
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Wilson, Robert M. “Mobile Bodies: Animal Migration in North American History.” Geoforum 65 (2015): 465–72.
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Wilson, Robert. “The Necessity of Activism.” Solutions Journal 3, no. 4 (2012): 75–79. http://thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1129.
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Wilson, Robert M. “Landscapes of Promise and Betrayal: Homesteading, Reclamation, and Japanese American Incarceration during the Second World War.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101, no. 2 (2011): 424–44.
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Wilson, Robert M. Seeking Refuge: Birds and Landscapes of the Pacific Flyway. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010.