Casey Lurtz

Casey Lurtz is an Associate Professor in the History Department at Johns Hopkins University, affiliated with the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. Her academic work focuses on modern Latin America, particularly Mexico, examining how rural communities engaged with global markets, economic ideas, and environmental transformations during the long nineteenth century.

Dr. Lurtz's research expertise spans multiple interconnected fields including:

• Modern Mexico and Latin American history
• Rural and agricultural development
• Commodities and the history of capitalism
• Border issues and migration (both international and forced)
• Economic history and ideas of development
• Environmental history and the relationship between landscapes and economies

Her scholarly work reveals how local communities actively shaped their engagement with global economic forces rather than merely responding to external pressures. Lurtz demonstrates how villagers, workers, and local politicians adapted liberal economic policies to advance their own interests, challenging traditional narratives of passive reception of global economic systems.

Dr. Lurtz has received prestigious fellowships that have supported her research, including:

• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship
• Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship
• Harvard Academy for International & Area Studies Fellowship
• Harvard-Newcomen Fellowship in Business History at Harvard Business School
• UC San Diego Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies Fellowship

As an educator, Lurtz mentors students in historical research methods and digital humanities. She has led collaborative projects like "History Lab: Making Maps of Mexico" where undergraduate students worked with historical agricultural data from 1900. Her teaching focuses on Latin America, Mexico, commodities, the history of capitalism, migration, and development. Notably, she has stated she will not be accepting graduate students during the 2024-2025 admission cycle.

Dr. Lurtz is actively involved in digital humanities initiatives, including the ArchivoMex project which makes historical Mexican data accessible, and collaborating with computer science students on digital table readers using OCR technology. She is also building a digital map of Mexico's municipalities based on the 1900 census as part of a collective of scholars interested in historical GIS in Mexico.