Tim Paulson

Assistant Professor

History, Power, Conflict and Ideas, Sustainability (IGS)

Office: ART 245
Phone: 250.807.8588
Email: tim.paulson@ubc.ca

Research Summary

Canadian history; environmental history; economic history; history of capitalism.

Courses & Teaching

Environmental history; Canadian history; North American history; world history.

I supervise undergraduate honours students in History, and I supervise graduate students in two themes of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies (IGS) program: Sustainability and Power, Conflict, and Ideas.

Websites

blogs.ubc.ca/timpaulson

Degrees

PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara
MA, University of California, Santa Barbara
BA, University of Victoria

Research Interests & Projects

I am a historian of capitalism and the non-human environment with unique training in scientific, political-economic, and archival scholarship and methods. My transnational research and writing explore all facets of the reciprocal relationship between human economic systems and their more-than-human settings. I also work to innovate archival and oral-history methods in applied sustainability research. I have several projects on the go related to the histories of livestock grazing, rangeland economies, wildfire management, and financial derivatives markets. Please ask me about them!

Selected Publications & Presentations

Tim Paulson, “Paper Steaks: Live cattle futures markets and the financial revolution of 1964,” Enterprise & Society 26, no. 2 (2025): 619-650. doi:10.1017/eso.2024.16

Tim Paulson, Kevin C. Brown, and Peter S. Alagona, “The test of time: Using historical methods to assess models of ecological change on California’s hardwood rangelands,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2020. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2020.1782168

Peter S. Alagona and Tim Paulson, “From the Classroom to the Countryside: The University of California’s Natural Reserve System and the Role of Field Stations in American Academic Life,” Landscape and the Academy: Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Studies Series, ed. Jon Beardsley and Daniel Bluestone (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection, 2019), 207-228.

Kelly Easterday, Tim Paulson, Proxima DasMohapatra, Peter Alagona, Shane Feirer, and Maggi Kelly, “From the field to the cloud: A review of three approaches to sharing historical data from field stations using principles from data science,” Frontiers in Environmental Science 6 (2018).

Tim Paulson, “From ‘Knife Men’ to ‘Streamlining with Curves’: Structure, Skill, and Gender in British Columbia’s Meatpacking Industry,” BC Studies 193 (Spring 2017): 115-145.

Peter S. Alagona, Tim Paulson, Andrew B. Esch and Jessica Marter-Kenyon, “Population and Land Use,” Ecosystems of California, ed. Hal Mooney and Erika Zavaleta (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016), 75-94.