Prof. Ruth Morgan (Australian National University) joins Dr. Philip Gooding (IOWC, McGill) to discuss her 2021 article “Health, Hearth and Empire: Climate, Race and Reproduction in British India and Western Australia.” Their conversation covers the nuances of 19th-century British imperial policy in the Indian Ocean World, the shortfalls of contemporary climatic theories of race and health, and the value of gender analysis in climate history as a whole.

Prof. Morgan is Associate Professor in ANU’s School of History, where she directs the Center for Environmental History. She works on the histories of science and climate in Australia, the British Empire, and the Indo-Pacific, and her monograph, Running Out? Water in Western Australia, was published in 2015 to wide acclaim, winning a 2016 Western Australian Premier's Book Award.

Links:

Article: https://doi.org/10.3197/096734021X16076828553511

Website: http://www.ruthamorgan.com/

The Indian Ocean World Podcast is hosted by Dr. Philip Gooding, produced by Sam Gleave Riemann, and published under the SSHRC-funded Partnership “Appraising Risk, Past and Present.”