Zephyr Frank

Zephyr Frank holds the Gildred Professorship of Latin American Studies and is Professor of History at Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in Iberian and Latin American Cultures and Environmental Social Sciences. He serves as Director of the Program on Urban Studies and is a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, reflecting his interdisciplinary focus across historical, environmental, and urban domains within the Department of History.

Frank earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1999, establishing his foundational expertise in Latin American historical scholarship before joining Stanford's academic community.

His research centers on Brazilian social and cultural history with specialized emphases on wealth distribution, inequality, and the digital humanities. This work intersects with environmental history through his Woods Institute affiliation and urban studies via his directorship, creating a unique synthesis of spatial analysis, textual scholarship, and socio-economic inquiry. His methodological innovation bridges traditional historical research with computational approaches to examine complex societal patterns.

Frank's publications reveal a consistent trajectory in Latin American historical studies, particularly focused on Brazil's socio-spatial dynamics. His work demonstrates increasing integration of environmental frameworks and digital methodologies, moving from literary-societal analyses of 19th-century Rio to transnational borderland studies incorporating hydrological systems. This evolution reflects broader trends in historical scholarship toward interdisciplinary, spatially-aware research paradigms.

As founding Director of the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) from 2011 to 2016, Frank pioneered institutional support for digital humanities at Stanford, establishing collaborative frameworks that continue to facilitate cross-departmental research initiatives and technological innovation in historical scholarship.