معرفی
David Sepkoski is the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in History of Science and a Professor in the Department of History and School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the transnational history of biological, environmental, and information sciences within cultural contexts, with particular attention to data collection, visualization, and the evolution of paleobiology.
- PhD in History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota
- MA in Social Sciences, University of Chicago
- BA, Carleton College
His work examines the interplay between scientific objectivity and cultural biases in debates about human nature. He was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2020-2021) for his project on biological determinism. Recent publications analyze sociobiology, environmental history, and the historiography of data.
Key research areas include:
- History of data and information systems
- Science and technology studies
- Digital humanities
- Extinction and biodiversity debates
His 2025 article in Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences explores sociobiology's political dimensions, while his 2024 Handbook of the Historiography of the Earth and Environmental Sciences redefines interdisciplinary approaches to ecological science history.
Scientific contributions
- Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2020)
- Author of two monographs on paleobiology and extinction
- Editorial work on data histories and bioinformatics
