Will Cowan

Will Cowan 與儀 is an environmental historian. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Southern California and served as a postdoctoral researcher in the USC Early Modern Studies Institute's Humanities in a Digital World Program.

He studies the history of weather and water extremes in California and the North American West. His dissertation, “The Big Winter & the Pacific Slope Superstorms of 1861-1862,” is the first historical reconstruction of the “Big Winter,” one of the most cataclysmic seasons in North America’s past. The project fuses environmental history, the history of science and meteorology, and disaster studies, underscoring the significance of atmospheric rivers to weather and water in California and the Pacific West.

Will has contributed to films by Weathered, Off the Beaten Path, and American Experience and has written for Environmental History, Western Historical Quarterly, The LA Times, and the Library of Congress. He is also a board member of the Historical Society of Southern California and affiliated faculty with the Huntington-USC Institute on California & the West (ICW) and the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute (EMSI).