Will Cowan

Will Cowan is an environmental historian. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Southern California and was a postdoctoral researcher for the USC Humanities in a Digital World Program. He studies the history of weather and water extremes in 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, Indigenous studies, and disaster studies, underscoring the significance of atmospheric rivers in the Pacific West. Will has contributed to documentaries by Weathered, Off the Beaten Path, and American Experience and has written pieces for Environmental History, Western Historical Quarterly, The LA Times, and the Library of Congress.