I’m a 25-year-old environmental historian based in London and Scotland interested in the intersections between ecology, sociology, economics, history, the law, and finance. I also have an interest in technology and privacy. I’m a keen hillwalker, train-travelling enthusiast, and allotmenteer.
I diagnose — I do not prescribe. I often make edits to my pieces after their publishing, so I recommend clicking through to this site rather than treating emailed copies as final.
Funded by the Faculty of Social & Historical Sciences through an AHRC Doctoral Landscape Award, I will be commencing a PhD in Environmental History at UCL’s Institute of the Americas from September 2026. My research will be examining differential technological use and adoption by Great Plains indigenous communities between c. 1400–1800 — and corresponding changes in ecological relations.
I completed an MLitt in Environmental History at the University of St Andrews in 2024, where my research focussed on the late early modern decline of white-tailed deer in southeastern North America. I specifically researched how changing economic incentive systems led to indigenous communities’ exploitation of deer, utilising an LLM-based sentiment analysis to analyse the frequency of land transactions in archival records over time — and matching these results with corresponding archaeological finds.
My BA in History at UCL, completed in 2023, focussed on a similar period, but looked north and west to beaver and bison decline in Hudson Bay and the Great Plains respectively. My dissertation on these matters was based on a novel theoretical framework that emphasised spatiotemporal relationship changes over time, tapping into a wide range of primary evidence — qualitative written records and quantitative trading records — to do this. I was placed on the Faculty’s Dean’s List in recognition of my academic achievements and for the originality of my research.
While the jump from this avowedly abstract historical work to contemporary challenges seems far, the long durée historical angles I hope to foster can inform how the solutions we use to solve today’s problems may exacerbate tomorrow’s — and how systemic change that would prevent this can be achieved. By zooming out, I hope to expose the limits of our current approaches.
Feedback or comments of any kind are more than welcome — pop me an email at tedtheisinger@substack.com
Find me on LinkedIn at in/tedtheisinger, and on Bluesky at @tedtheisinger.com
If you’d like a copy of my full CV, please do get in touch!
