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 news organisations, government-sponsored photographers, soil scientists and others, reported from a series of acute flood and drought crises in the Depression-era United States. 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’.