Mark P. Carey
Assistant Professor of History
Washington and Lee University
Recipient of the Rising Star Award
Mark Carey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Washington & Lee University, where he has taught since 2006. He specializes in Latin American and environmental history, also serving as a core faculty member for the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program and an affiliate faculty member in the Environmental Studies Program.
Dr. Carey's research focuses on the societal dimensions of global climate change and glacier disasters in the Peruvian Andes. He is currently funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation and has in the past received fellowships and grants from sources as diverse as the Social Science Research Council, American Meteorological Society, Pacific Rim Research Program, Fulbright Program, and the Inter-American Foundation. Last year Dr. Carey won the Leopold-Hidy Prize for the best article published in the journal Environmental History during 2007. In addition to publishing several articles and book chapters, he also has a forthcoming book entitled The Ice Is History: Climate, Glacier Disasters, and Society in the Andes.
Having spent nearly four years living, researching, and teaching in various Latin American countries, Dr. Carey promotes similar experiences for his students. In Spring 2008, he organized and co-taught an interdisciplinary study abroad program for Washington & Lee students in Barbados and St. Vincent. Dr. Carey's courses on the history of natural disasters and environmental history attract students from many disciplines and expose them to new approaches to history. He also teaches several Latin American history courses and helps place students in internships, study abroad, and other international experiences.
Dr. Carey was a S.V. Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow in the Geography Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He has a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Davis, an M.A. from the University of Montana, and a B.A. from the State University of New York at Potsdam.
Beyond teaching at the university level, Dr. Carey has also taught fifth- and sixth-graders in Costa Rica, worked as a park ranger at Mount Rainier and Glacier National Parks, and been a canoe guide in Minnesota's Boundary Waters. He currently lives in Lexington, Virginia with his wife and their two sons.
