Neil Safier

Neil Safier is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Brown University, where he also serves as Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He holds additional affiliations with Hispanic Studies, the Institute for Environment and Society, Science/Technology/Society program, and Native American/Indigenous Studies. Dr. Safier earned his PhD from Johns Hopkins University (2004) and previously held positions at University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and University of British Columbia.

His research examines:

• Transnational knowledge networks in the 18th-century Atlantic world
• Interconnections between Caribbean/Brazilian plantation economies and natural history
• Environmental and ethnographic history of the Amazon basin across temporal scales
• Global histories of scientific collecting and print culture

Publication analysis reveals concentrated focus on: colonial science, knowledge circulation methodologies, Enlightenment geography, and indigenous epistemologies. His work consistently employs transregional frameworks and interdisciplinary approaches bridging history of science, environmental studies, and cultural geography.

Major Honors:

• Gilbert Chinard Prize (2009) for monograph Measuring the New World
• Research fellowships at: Huntington Library, Max Planck Institute, New York Botanical Garden, Newberry Library, and University of Wisconsin Institute for Humanities Research

As Director of the John Carter Brown Library (2013-2021), Safier led one of the world's premier archives for early Americas research. He currently mentors graduate students working on Atlantic environmental history, colonial science, and global knowledge production.