Philip Slavin

Professor Philip Slavin is a leading interdisciplinary historian at the University of Stirling, specializing in the intersection of medieval history, environmental history, and scientific methodologies. With a PhD from the University of Toronto and prior affiliations at Yale, McGill, and the University of Kent, his work bridges humanities and sciences through collaborations with palaeo-scientists.

His research combines palaeogenetics, palaeoclimatology, and GIS analysis to explore four key historical pillars: infectious diseases, environmental disasters, food security, and socio-economic inequality. This approach spans from Neolithic times to the modern era, focusing on the Second Plague Pandemic and the Black Death's origins revealed in his 2022 Nature publication.

Scientific awards include the T.S. Ashton Prize (2013) and recognition as a top-cited scholar in the Economic History Review (2015). His publications analyze

• Medieval livestock pandemics
• Climate-famine relationships
• Plague's socio-economic impacts
• Human adaptation to ecological stress

Active in graduate supervision, he seeks students working on late-medieval to early modern Eurasian history. Personal interests include music performance, field research in remote locations, and historical linguistics.