I joined the faculty of the University of Arizona (UA) in 2014, after twelve years at Washington State University. I am a Professor of Modern Chinese History and the UNESCO Chair of Environmental History in the UA's Department of History. I also am the the Director of the UA Global Studies Program.
My research interests lay at the confluence of environmental history and the history of technological change in modern China, particularly after 1949. More specifically, my research focuses on long-term continuity and change in China’s management of water resources. My publications include Engineering the State: The Huai River and Reconstruction in Nationalist China (Routledge 2002, 2018), State and Economy in Republican China: A Handbook for Scholars (co-edited, Harvard 2001), The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China (Harvard 2015), and Landscape Change and Resource Utilization in East Asia: Perspectives from Environmental History (co-edited, Routledge, 2018). My work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the Institute for Advanced Studies (Princeton). For more, please see my UA Department of History personal webpage at davidpietz.info
I have been committed to communicating my scholarship and teaching to audiences beyond the academy. I have made presentations to a wide array of audiences, including education, religious, and business groups. These efforts were recognized as I was named a Fellow in the Public Intellectual Program of the National Committee on United States-China Relations in 2006, and a Research Fellow at the National Asia Research Program of the National Bureau of Asia Research and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in 2010.
Please feel free to contact me!