Jacob Swisher is currently a doctoral student in the Department of History. He is an environmental historian with interests in borderlands, the digital humanities, and the North American West. Jacob’s current work focuses on the commodity history of early modern New Mexico. Jacob examines how the production, circulation, and exchange of commodities fostered relationships between people both in New Mexico and around the globe in the early modern period and is particularly interested in the role of human and animal labor in powering systems of commodity exchange. Jacob hopes that his work will not only add to our knowledge of connections between the North American West and the early modern world system, but that his research will also contribute a historical perspective to our understanding of the relationship between present-day systems of exchange, systems of energy use, and the Anthropocene.
Jacob is originally from Gardnerville, Nevada. He holds his B.A. in history from Montana State University and his M.A. in history from Colorado State University.