Dr. Megan Black received her B.A. in English and Film Studies from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 2009. She is now assistant professor of International History at the London School of Economics with research interests in the United States and the world, environmental history, and political economy. Her current research explores the role of the U.S. Department of the Interior in spearheading the pursuit of minerals beyond U.S. formal sovereignty in indigenous lands, formal US territories, nations throughout the global South, the oceans, and outer space. In the process, the Interior Department forged powerful linkages between the histories of US settler colonialism and US global reach. Her book manuscript, The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power, was released by Harvard University Press in October 2018.
Dr. Black received her Ph.D. in American Studies at The George Washington University. She undertook postdoctoral work as a fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. She was a finalist for the Organization of American Historian’s Louis Pelzer Memorial Prize and the American Studies Association’s Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize for Best Dissertation. Her work has been supported by grants from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, Harry S. Truman Library, and Lyndon B. Johnson Library.