Sam Hawksford White

Sam Hawksford White

Postgraduate Researcher

Qualifications

  • BA (University of London)
  • MSt (University of Cambridge)
  • MSc (Oxford Brookes University)

Summary

Sam Hawksford White is a third-year PhD student at the University of Hull’s Centre for Water Cultures, funded through a partnership with the Leverhulme Trust. He graduated from the University of Cambridge with an MSt in Building History and holds a BA in Art History from the University of London. His research lies at the intersection of environmental history and the history of photography, foregrounding the photojournalistic coverage of natural hazards and environmental change. In his thesis, he investigates how the press, government-sponsored photographers, soil scientists and others, reported from a series of acute flood and drought crises in the Depression-era United States. His research project has been supported by BAAS, HOTCUS, and the European Association for American Studies. He was an Alfred D. Bell Jr. Fellow at the Forest History Society (Durham, NC) in June 2023.

Project title: ‘Swirling Dust – River Rising’: A Comparative Analysis of Drought and Flooding in 1930s American Documentary Photography and Photojournalism’.

Recent outputs

View more outputs

Digital Artefact

Book Review: American Energy Cinema, ed. by Robert Lifset, Raechel Lutz, and Sarah Stanford-McIntyre

Hawksford White, S. (2023). Book Review: American Energy Cinema, ed. by Robert Lifset, Raechel Lutz, and Sarah Stanford-McIntyre. [Website Content]

'Malign Living Structures': Functions of the Survey Image in Soil Erosion – A National Menace

Hawksford White, S. ‘Malign Living Structures’: Functions of the Survey Image in Soil Erosion – A National Menace. [Webpage]

Journal Article

Flood Photography and the Visual Component of Environmental American Studies

White, S. H. (2025). Flood Photography and the Visual Component of Environmental American Studies. New area studies, 4(3), https://doi.org/10.37975/NAS.78

Presentation / Conference Contribution

High Waters: the 1937 Ohio-Mississippi Flood Disaster in Photographic Cultures

Hawksford White, S. (2023, April). High Waters: the 1937 Ohio-Mississippi Flood Disaster in Photographic Cultures. Paper presented at British Association for American Studies Annual Conference 2023, University of Keele

Research interests

Environmental History, History of Photography, Journalism History, Modern American History, Documentary Studies

Awards and prizes

BAAS Research Assistance Award

2024 - 2025

HOTCUS Doctoral and Early Career Research Award

2024 - 2025

EAAS Postgraduate Travel Grant

2024 - 2025

Awarded by the European Association for American Studies

Water Futures Travel Award

2024 - 2024

Received funding to attend the British Academy Global Professorship Summative Event: “Water Futures: Historical Perspectives from Indigenous Ecological Knowledge”, 12 July 2024, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. The travel award was generously provided by the British Academy as part of the British Academy Global Professorship ‘Native Ecologies: A Deep History of Climate Change’.

Alfred D. Bell Jr. Travel Grant

2023

The Forest History Society annually offers a number of competitive Alfred D. Bell Jr., Travel Grants to support travel and lodging expenses incurred by researchers conducting in-depth studies at the Society's Alvin J. Huss Archives and Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Library. FHS established the award to honor the memory of wholesale lumberman, forest industry editor, and former FHS vice president Alfred D. Bell Jr.

Conference presentation

IAMHIST (International Association for Media and History) Masterclass 2025

2025 - 2025

Scholarship role

Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship

2022 - 2026

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