David Max Findley
PANTROPOCENE Research Group
Main Focus
My research focuses on
the Philippine Islands, and has covered topics such as historic vulnerabilities
and adaptations to natural hazards, the dispersal and subsequent adoption or
rejection of introduced domesticates, and the historic environmental impacts of
different communities and societies. I have previously published on
human-environment and Human-Earth System interactions in natural science,
social science, and history journals. Presently, I am completing land use
models that integrate archival, material, and ethnographic evidence to
characterize land use by colonial and Indigenous societies across the
Philippine Archipelago from the mid-sixteenth to the late-nineteenth century. I
am also in the process of preparing a book detailing the multifaceted impacts
of natural hazards on Spanish Luzon (the Philippines's largest island) over a
109-year period spanning the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Curriculum Vitae
I am an environmental and Anthropocene historian whose research centers on the history of Human-Earth System interactions and the dialogue between global forces and small-scale actions undertaken by communities and individuals. Prior to obtaining my PhD, I received a BSc from Haverford College (USA) in Chemistry and History and worked for a year as an assistant in a geochemistry laboratory at the University of Michigan, during which time I also spent three months at Toolik Field Station near Deadhorse, Alaska. I obtained my PhD from Murdoch University's Asia Research Centre (now the Indo-Pacific Research Centre) studying the physical, economic, and socio-cultural impacts of repeated hazards in Spanish controlled portions of the Philippine island of Luzon between 1645 and 1754 CE. Since 2020, I have worked as postdoctoral research assistant on the ERC PANTROPOCENE Project and am constructing land use models for the entire Philippine Archipelago just prior to and throughout the Spanish colonial period (1565-1898).