Jacob Swisher is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History with research interests in borderlands, environmental history, and the history of the North American West. His dissertation research investigates the origins of the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch that accounts for the ways that human activities have significantly affected elements of the Earth System since the Industrial Revolution. Swisher’s work takes a borderlands approach to studying the Anthropocene, following circulating people, species, and objects into New Mexico’s Upper Rio Grande Basin to better understand how local entanglements between people and things shaped the historical development of the planet-spanning exchange networks through which we alter the Earth System today.

Swisher earned his B.A. in history from Montana State University and holds an M.A. in history from Colorado State University. His research has been generously supported by Notre Dame’s Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, and the American Historical Association. His work can be found in Montana the Magazine of Western History, Colorado Heritage Magazine, and Current Research in Digital History.