Dr Alessandro Antonello

My research investigates the environmental and international histories of Antarctica, the cryosphere, and the world’s oceans in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I'm also beginning to wade into histories of seagrass and other nearshore, intertidal and subtidal environments.

My current major project is titled “An international environmental history of the ‘World Ocean’, 1950s-2000s” - this project has been supported by an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship (2019-22). This project aims to investigate the ways in which states, international organisations, and international communities have engaged with and conceptualised the ‘World Ocean’ as a natural environment from the 1950s to the 2000s. In the context of current environmental and geopolitical challenges for the ocean, this project aims to analyse how these actors built institutions, communities, and territories in and for the ocean environment as a foundation for generating knowledge and claiming power, rights, and resources.

My first book, The Greening of Antarctica: Assembling an International Environment, was published by Oxford University Press (2019). My scholarly articles have appeared in Isis, Environmental History, the Journal of Historical Geography, Environmental Humanities, the International Review of Environmental History, Progress in Human Geography, the Australian Journal of Politics and History, The Polar Journal, and several edited collections.

I am eager to supervisor research students (PhD and masters) in a wide range of subjects across environmental history, the environmental humanities and posthumanities, history of science, and international history. Prospective students are welcome to contact me directly.

Before arriving at Flinders University, I held a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Melbourne (2016-2019) and a US National Science Foundation-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Oregon (2014-2016). I received my PhD from the Australian National University in 2014.