Historian Alan Mikhail awarded Leopold-Hidy Prize in environmental history

The American Society for Environmental History awarded Alan Mikhail, professor of history, its 2015 Leopold-Hidy Prize for the best article in the journal Environmental History.

Titled “Ottoman Iceland: A Climate History,” Mikhail’s article was chosen as “one that best exemplifies the research and writing in our field,” according to the journal’s editor. Judges praised Mikhail for offering “a perspective that is strikingly original and visionary” and that the article “demonstrates a first-class historical imagination, clarity of thought, and self-reflective practice.”

Mikhail is a historian of the early modern Muslim world, the Ottoman Empire, and Egypt whose research and teaching focus mostly on the history of empires and environments. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley, where his dissertation won the Malcolm H. Kerr Award of the Middle East Studies Association and Berkeley’s James H. Kettner Award. He was a member of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities at Stanford University before coming to Yale in 2010.

The American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) increases understanding of current environmental issues by analyzing their historical background. Founded in 1977, ASEH promotes scholarship and teaching in environmental history, supports the professional needs of its members, and connects its undertakings with larger communities. The society promotes its activities through publication of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental History, annual conferences, scholarly awards and fellowships, online discussions, conversation with other professional societies, and public outreach.