People
Jeffrey Bolster
Ph.D., John Hopkins University, 1992
- Associate Professor of History
- Co-Director History of Marine Animal Populations
Research Areas
Marine environmental history
Research Emphasis
I continue to explore historical problems regarding peoples’ interaction with the sea. As a social historian I am especially interested in the relationship of experience and meaning. As an environmental historian I am intrigued with anthropogenic changes to the sea and the ways those changes have influenced human society and culture. I have written on African American seamen in the age of sail; the social and environmental history of the Piscataqua estuary that separates Maine and New Hampshire; shipping in the making of America; and most recently, the marine environmental history of the northwest Atlantic. Reflecting the plasticity of professional labels, I have been called maritime historian, a historian of Afro- America; an environmental historian, and an Atlantic historian. I am currently part of an interdisciplinary, international research project called HMAP (History of Marine Animal Populations). Funded by the National Science Foundation, NH Sea Grant, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and others, HMAP is working on marine environmental history and historical ecology globally. The HMAP Center at UNH, which I co-direct, works specifically on the Gulf of Maine and Nova Scotian Shelf.