Research Interests: Environmental history; history of capitalism; history of U.S. empire; animal history; history of technology; economic history; urban history; STS; the Anthropocene.

Oliver Lazarus is a PhD candidate in the History of Science Department. He is interested in the industrialization of life and the place of the environment in the construction and reproduction of capitalism. His most recent work focuses on American state-led attempts in the U.S. and its colonies to standardize animal life in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the place of this project in both the construction of industrial capitalism and twentieth-century American extraterritorial power. His M.A. thesis focused on the Great Epizootic, a horse influenza originating in North America in 1872 that effectively halted daily life in New York City for weeks, revealing how the construction of industrial urban capitalism was carried out by and through a concomitant industrialization of nonhuman life.

Before starting his PhD, Oliver completed his M.A. at New York University, and worked as a journalist for WNYC radio.

Previous Degrees:

M.A., Animal Studies, New York University

B.A., International and Area Studies, Washington University in St. Louis