About
I am a historian of North American environmental history, and assistant professor of history at the University of Northern British Columbia. I hold a BA (Hons) and MA in History from the University of British Columbia, and an MPhil and PhD from Columbia University. My dissertation, “America's Acclimatization Exchange,” analyzes animal “acclimatization” – the intentional introduction of non-indigenous species – in America from the 1850s through to the 1970s. This massive bioengineering movement permanently added several new species – carp, pheasants, quails, sparrows, starlings – and millions of individual creatures to American landscapes. In studying it, I argue that historians have failed to appreciate the magnitude of animal acclimatization, as well as the civilizational, nation-building terms in which Americans understood it. I think they have also missed the extent to which the US government embraced acclimatization as a long-term strategy to sustain the game supply for America's many hunters.
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What is more, my dissertation modifies the usual understanding of two of the most famous events in environmental history: the American conservation movement and the notorious “Columbian Exchange” of animals, plants, and diseases from Europe to the Americas. Although it is counter-intuitive, enthusiasm for the acclimatization of new species coexisted with efforts to conserve indigenous American landscapes and species—in fact, many acclimatizers fashioned themselves conservationists too. Moreover, the well-known Atlantic World “Columbian Exchange” in the wake of European contact and early settlement is only part of the story. A nineteenth and twentieth century “American acclimatization exchange”—much of it circulating in the Pacific World, not the Atlantic—must be accounted for to understand fully America’s biotic relationship with the rest of the world.
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I welcome inquiries about my work. I can be reached at barrie.blatchford@unbc.ca​​
Education
2024
PhD in American History
Columbia University
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2020
Master of Philosophy
Columbia University
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2017
Master of Arts (History)
University of British Columbia
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2015
Bachelor of Arts (Honours)
University of British Columbia
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Awards, Fellowships and Grants
(Selected)
My research has been generously funded by several institutions that I would like to explicitly thank for their crucial support of young researchers. Thank you to the Smithsonian Institution, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the American Philosophical Society, the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, and Columbia University. I would also like to gratefully acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Tina and Morris Wagner Foundation Fellowship during my MA.
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Awards
2022 - Fishel-Calhoun Prize.
Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
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2015 - J. H. Stewart Reid Medal and Prize in Honours History.
University of British Columbia
Fellowships
2022 - Research Fellow. Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
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2022 - Predoctoral Residential Research Fellow.
Smithsonian Institution.
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2022 - Eugene Garfield Fellowship.
American Philosophical Society.​
2017-2022 - Richard Hofstadter Fellowship.
Columbia University.
2017-2021 - Doctoral Fellowship.
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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