Jonathan E. Robins

Contact

jrobins@mtu.edu
906-487-3080

Associate Professor of History

PhD, University of Rochester, 2010
BA, St. Mary's College of Maryland, 2004

Biography

Jonathan Robins is an award-winning author and an environmental historian specializing in histories of agriculture, industry, and commodities. He has published on cotton agriculture and the textile industry, food history, colonial history in Africa and Southeast Asia, and the global oil palm industry. His current research interests include aluminum, copper, and other critical minerals, landfills and waste systems, technological transitions in biomaterials and synthetic fibers, plantation industries, and agroforestry. He serves on the steering committee of the Commodities of Empire project and was the global book review editor for Agricultural History from 2020-2025.

For prospective graduate students:

I work with graduate students in the Industrial Heritage & Archaeology (MS, PhD), Environmental and Energy Policy (MS, PhD), and Sustainable Communities (MS) programs. I welcome inquiries from applicants interested in the historical dimensions of agriculture, industry, heritage, environments and environmental policy, and other related topics. Please contact me and review the curricula for our career-oriented interdisciplinary programs before applying.

Links of Interest

Areas of Expertise

Commodity history
Environmental history
Agricultural and industrial history
Global economic and business history
History of colonialism
Food history

Recent Publications

“Primary Commodities and Industrial Consumers: The Case of Palm Oil.” In William Clarence-Smith, Jonathan Curry-Machado, Jean Stubbs, and Jelmer Vos (eds), Oxford Handbook of Commodity History, 287-310. Oxford University Press, 2024.
"Cotton.” In Jeannie Whayne (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History, 394-410. Oxford University Press, 2024.
"Picking Stories, Selling Chaga: How History Helped Make Chaga a Superfood." The Otter/La Loutre, September 2023
Oil Palm: a Global History. University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Winner of the 2022 AHA Bentley Prize for best book in world history and 2022 Agricultural History Society Wallace Award for best book in agricultural history outside the US.
"Shallow Roots: The Early Oil Palm Plantation Industry in Southeast Asia, 1848-1940." Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 51, no. 4 (2020)
"Humans and other pollinators in the oil palm plantation complex." Arcadia no. 8 (Spring 2021)

Recent Funding

Aluminum Critical Mineral Production via Landfill Mining: Environmental, Community, and Technical Feasibility for Integrated Multi-Material Resource Recovery, Department of Energy (co-PI with PI Paul Sanders and co-PI Tim Eisele, 2023-2026)
University of Connecticut Humanities Institute visiting fellow (2018-2019)
American Philosophical Society-British Academy Joint Fellow (2018)

Recent presentations

“Palm oil or palm wine? Commodities and anti-commodities in colonial West Africa,” Lausanne Advanced Seminar in Political Ecology, 2024.
"Making kapok a commodity: scientific and commercial categorization and commodity improvement under Dutch and British colonialism, 1850-1950," World Congress of Environmental History, 2024
“The Colonial Origins of the Palm Oil Industry," keynote address for "Palm Oil Pitfalls conference, 2024.
“Tree Crop Plantations as Re/Afforestation,” Agricultural History Society annual conference, 2023.
"Oil Palms at the End of Empire," Robinson Business History Conference, Portland State University, 2022

Research Projects

Biomaterial transitions: this project explores the histories of fiber-consuming industries and the impact of synthetics on farmers, manufacturers, and end-users. What can historic transitions from biomaterials to synthetics tell us about future transitions to sustainable biomaterials?
Agroforestry futures: Examines the historical development of agroforestry concepts and institutions.
Landfill Mining: this DOE-funded project examines the possibilities for extracting aluminum and other materials from landfill sites.
Oil palm and plantation systems: ongoing work on the history and contemporary expansion of the oil palm industry
Chaga: history, culture, and commercialization of a foraged fungus
Swamp, trees, and peat soils: exploring small- and large-scale exploitation of wetland tree spaces and peatlands.

Courses

Undergraduate courses:

SS1500 Introduction to History
SS3501 Making History: Historical Methods, Writing, and New Media
SS2504 World History to 1500
SS2505 World History since 1500
SS3951 Topics in World History (topics include Food in World History, Slavery and Freedom in World History, Empires in World History, and others)
SS4630 Advanced Research in Social Sciences

Graduate courses:

SS5550 Global Environmental History
SS5551 Global Industrial History