Gerard Fitzgerald
About
Dr. Gerard J. Fitzgerald’s research employs a multi-disciplinary approach informed by different subfields including environmental history, the history of technology, sensory history, the history of public health, and the history of science to investigate the evolution of modern warfare during the American Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. His work on military-environmental history analyzes the environmental and public health consequences of industrialization and militarization, in particular the creation of biological and chemical weapons, through the historical analysis of the environmental, cultural, economic, medical, scientific, and technological forces that both define and shape American society. In addition, he is examining the evolution of military-environmental history in the context of ongoing events. While climate and environment have been important factors driving human activity and conflict since the dawn of organized warfare, the recent ongoing transformation of our planet and the acceleration of global warming because of anthropogenic factors during the Anthropocene—different from natural planetary climate evolution—poses not only a multi-dimensional national security threat, but more importantly, a threat to the future of humanity and to the Earth itself.
In addition to teaching in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science, he is also a Visiting Scholar at The Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger in Stavanger, Norway. He also helps lead the War and Environment SIG of the American Association of Environmental History (ASEH).
Education
Post-doc, Dibner Center for the History of Science and Technology, MIT
Ph.D. Carnegie Mellon University
MS Carnegie Mellon University
BA University of Georgia
My research and teaching focus on the relationship between war and nature, in particular the historical evolution and growth of the military-industrial-academic complex during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States, the resulting impact and legacy of war and militarization on the environment, in addition to the medical and public health consequences for both humans and non-humans.