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Melissa Charenko, Ph.D.

Melissa Charenko
  • Assistant Professor
  • LB Course Subject Area: Science and Society
  • Department of History
  • pronouns: she/her
  • Holmes Hall, E-191
  • 919 E. Shaw Lane
  • East Lansing, MI 48825
  • (517) 884-1520

LBC COURSES

  • LB 325A: Science and the Environment
  • LB 321A: Science and the Public
  • LB 492: Senior Seminar

BIOGRAPHY

Melissa Charenko received her Ph.D. in the History of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018. Her work explores scientists’ diverse understandings of climate, which, she argues, arise from the various ways that scientists encounter, measure, and see climate. She is particularly interested in the ways that scientists use climate proxies, such as fossil pollen, tree rings, or air bubbles in ice, to understand past and future climates.

At Lyman Briggs, Dr. Charenko teaches courses on Science and the Environment (where students visit sites in the Lansing area to explore the relationships between science and the environment), Science and the Public (where students use podcasts to examine interactions between scientists and the public), a Senior Seminar (where students use a board game to understand biology and society), and the introduction to History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science. She also teaches courses on Environmental History in the Department of History.

Dr. Charenko has been a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and her work has been supported by the Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Historical Studies.

EDUCATION

  • Ph.D., History of Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • M.A., Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, (IHPST), University of Toronto
  • Honors B.A. & B.Sc., Arts and Science, McMaster University

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

  • Charenko, Melissa. “American Blitzkrieg or Ecological Indian,” in New Earth Histories, Alison Bashford, Adam Bobbette, Emily Kern (eds.), University of Chicago Press (forthcoming 2023).