Sarah Sears

Sarah Sears was an IGCC Dissertation Fellow from 2022-2023. She studies modern Latin America, with a focus on environmental history. Her dissertation project, titled “Negotiating Nature: An Environmental History of the U.S.-Mexico Border,” examines conservation efforts and environmental justice in the U.S.-Mexico border region. Beginning in 1848, her research reconstructs a transnational environmental history of haciendas, ranching, and nineteenth-century capitalist development and traces the changes in conservation initiatives and diplomatic relations through the twentieth century, covering revolutionary land reform, wildlife and livestock management, and international conservation initiatives.

Proposal Title: Negotiating Nature: An Environmental History of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1848–1994