Sean Adams

Sean Adams is the Hyatt and Cici Brown Professor of History at the University of Florida, affiliated with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences' Department of History. His research focuses on American capitalism, energy history, and 19th-century U.S. history. He leads the Inquire Capitalism program, offering resources on capitalism's history.

Adams earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1999. His major works include Home Fires: How Americans Kept Warm in the 19th Century (2014), Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America (2004), and a three-volume anthology on the American coal industry (2013). He also edited A Companion to the Era of Andrew Jackson (2013) and The Early American Republic: A Documentary History (2009).

His research explores how energy dependency shaped American capitalism, linking fossil fuel usage to 19th-century economic and political structures. Recent work addresses coal's cultural and economic dominance, Civil War financial strategies, and gendered consumption patterns in fuel use.

Adams teaches courses on American capitalism, global energy history, and 19th-century U.S. history. His articles span topics like antebellum economic crises, labor movements in mining regions, and comparative analyses of coal industries in Virginia and Pennsylvania.

He actively contributes to scholarly discourse through book reviews and program development, bridging historical analysis with contemporary debates about energy and capitalism.