Founder of the University of Connecticut’s Maritime Studies program, Professor Helen M. Rozwadowski teaches history of science, environmental history and public history as well as interdisciplinary and experiential maritime-related courses. She has spent her career encouraging scholars and students to join in the writing of the history of interconnections between oceans and people.
Her recent book, Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans (2018), is published by Reaktion Books, an independent publisher of innovative nonfiction. She was awarded the History of Science Society’s Davis Prize for best book directed to a wide public audience for Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea (2005). In The Sea Knows No Boundaries she explores the history of 20th-century marine sciences that support international fisheries and marine environmental management. Recently she has co-edited Soundings and Crossings: Doing Science at Sea 1800-1970, one of several volumes that have established the field of history of oceanography.
She was awarded fellowships or grants by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (Munich, Germany), the William E. & Mary B. Ritter Fellowship of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution.