Fellows

Christopher Jones is a historian interested in the intersections between energy, technology, and the environment. He is the author of Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America (Harvard, 2014). Chris received a BA in philosophy from Stanford University in 2000 with a minor in science, technology, and society studies. After graduating, he worked in Silicon Valley for several years before joining the University of Pennsylvania History and Sociology of Science Department. His dissertation studies the development of America's first fossil-fuel intensive region, the mid-Atlantic. In particular, he focuses on the critical roles played by transportation infrastructure in creating new energy consumption patterns. His research explores the ways coal canals, oil pipelines, and electricity transmission made the widespread and intensified use of fossil fuels possible, stimulated the rise of urbanization and industrialization, and contributed to the emergence of a society dependent on ever-increasing supplies of energy.

As a Ziff Environmental Fellow, Chris worked with Sheila Jasanoff in the Harvard Kennedy School to revise his dissertation into a book and develop the policy implications of his research. In addition, he began work on his second project, a comparative study of coal use in China, India, and the United States in the twentieth century.