About Me

Welcome! I am a historian, geographer, writer, and publicly-engaged educator focused primarily on the peoples and landscapes of the North American West.

I currently serve as the Director of the Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West and teach history at Montana State University in Bozeman. I was recently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. My work has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Science Foundation, and my writing has appeared in a range of scholarly and popular venues, including The Washington Post, Ecological Applications, and The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. My article, “‘Whenever we exist on any land, we know it is our country’: Cocopa Mobility and the Colorado River in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1887-1936,” was published in the Spring 2023 issue of the Western Historical Quarterly. It was awarded the Western History Association’s 2024 Bert M. Fireman and Janet Fireman Award for Best Student Article Published in the Western Historical Quarterly.

I hold a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a B.A. in Politics-Environmental Studies from Whitman College.

Scroll down to explore my current writing and research projects, public engagement initiatives, teaching, and interdisciplinary collaborations.

You can subscribe to my Substack “Overlooks & Understories” here.

Writing

I write narrative nonfiction for both popular and scholarly audiences. Through intimate portraits and micro-histories, my writing explores migrations of marginalized peoples who, in the face of state-induced violence and dispossession, made homes in some of the most rugged landscapes of the North American West. Read about my book project and essays.

Public Engagement

One of my deepest convictions is to use the tools of historical interpretation, place-based storytelling, and relational organizing to build multiracial coalitions to make the West a place where everyone belongs while supporting Native sovereignty. Learn about and become involved in ongoing initiatives in public engagement.

Teaching

I have taught diverse groups of all ages in both classroom and field settings at institutions ranging from universities to liberal arts colleges to large public universities.

Collaborations

From co-authored papers to experiential learning committees to digital environmental humanities publications, interdisciplinary collaboration is a foundation of my work. Read about my collaborations.

Headshot by Jesse Pfammatter. All other photos © Daniel Grant, unless otherwise noted.