CV Alexis Rider

Education and Experience

• 2023-2025 Postdoctoral Researcher, ‘Making Climate History,’ University of Cambridge
• 2022-2023 Postdoctoral Scholar, Institute for Historical Research, School of Advanced Studies, University of London
• 2017-2022 Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania       
• 2014-2017 M.A. in the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania   
• 2012-2014 M.A. in Liberal Studies, The New School for Social Research 
• 2003-2007 B.A. Hons (First Class) in English Literature, Victoria University Wellington                            

Research Interests

• History of science and the environment
• The Anthropocene
• The cryosphere and the politics of ice
• Environmental humanities
• Deep, nonhuman time
• Waste and discard studies and economic futures
• 19th and 20th century global history

Ongoing Research Projects 

• Ice as a proxy for conceptions of global environmental risk and change
• IKEA as a metric for the Anthropocene
• The ‘bucket problem’ in histories of climate science and ocean measurements
• Measurement and metrics (in collaboration with artist Himali Singh Soin)

Networks and Activities

• Member of the British Society for the History of Science
• Member of the European Society for Environmental History
• Co-leader of Anthropocene (Climate Histories) Series (University of Cambridge)

Selected Publications 

• 2025                “(Re)making Marble Island: Romanticising Capital and Collapse in an Early Twentieth-Century Arctic Quarry” under R&R with Environment and History
• 2024                “Glitch Geology: Ice Sheets and the Unconformities of Deep Time,” Social Anthropology special issue: “Icy Liveliness in the Anthropocene,” Vol.1 Iss. 32.
• 2023                SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism special issue, “Breaking Earth” (co-editor with Paul Harris, Loyola Marymount University), Vol. 52, no. 3, 2023.
• 2023                Review Essay: “Flows of History,” Past and Present (co-author with Tamara Fernando and Felice Phsyioc).
• 2023                “An Agent of Most Dire Calamities: Ice, Waste, and Frozen Futures,” in New Earth Histories ed. Alison Bashford, Adam Bobbette, Emily Kern, University of Chicago Press, 2023.
• 2022                “Ice,” in An Anthropogenic Table of Elements ed. Thao Pan, Courtney Addison, and Timothy Neale. 2022. University of Toronto Press.
• 2020                “Keeping Time with Melting Rock,” Social Science Research Council Items ‘Ways of Water’ online series (December 2020) https://items.ssrc.org/category/ways-of-water/
• 2019                “Ice,” in ‘Theorizing the Contemporary’ Editor’s Forum, Cultural Anthropology, culanth.org/fieldsights/ice
• 2019                “Consuming the Anthropocene,” Journal for the History of Ideas jhiblog.org/2019/07/03/consuming-the-anthropocene-2/
• 2018                “Art in Arctic Fields,” Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities https://ppeh.sas.upenn.edu/field-notes/art-arctic-fields-part-1
• 2018                “Science and Ice: The Changing Sublime in the Frozen North,” Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities online platform ppeh.sas.upenn.edu/field-notes/science-and-ice-changing-sublime-frozen-north

Curatorial/Art

• 2022        Fluid Matters, Grounded Bodies: Decolonizing Ecological Encounters, NYU Gallatin Galleries, New York.
• 2021-22   Brow of a God/Jaw of a Devil: Unsettling the Source of the Nile. Orleans House Gallery, London.
• 2021        “Healing from Meteorites,” 2021 MOMENTA Biennale: ‘Sensing Nature,’ curatorial essay.
• 2019        “Arctic Imagination: Part One,” Frieze London exhibition catalog essay, also available online www.frieze.com/article/arctic-imagination-part-one
• 2019         “we are opposite like that,” film co-produced with Himali Singh Soin, commissioned by Frieze London, and screened globally. Currently at Art Institute of Chicago. forma.org.uk/projects/we-are-opposite-like-that