During the 10-month period of implementation, work related to SRSAI focused on literature review, primary source research, archival research, and dissemination and communication. For the first four months of the project, work focused primarily on the literature review. This helped build the researcher’s competency in the fields of environmental history, international history, and works that explored the intersection of both. This not only resulted in the review of numerous books, articles, and reports but also led to the development of a familiarity with these fields and a knowledge of which works to consult as the project continues to evolve.
During the next four months, primary source research and archival research commanded most of the researcher’s attention. Primary source research focused on the extensive published materials related to the specific topic of the project, which allowed the researcher to collect data unavailable in the existing scholarly literature. Archival research focused on the examination of data held in archives in seven cities across the United States (Seattle, Portland, Eugene, Tucson, Denver, Durham, Princeton). This resulted in the collection of more than three gigabytes of data, all of which is publicly accessible to researchers at those archives, relevant to the project. Due to unsafe travel conditions related to sanitary concerns in the United Kingdom in the first months of 2022 and plans for the project’s early termination, archival research in that country were cancelled.
The remainder of work activity during the grant period focused on scholarly dissemination and communication. On 22 December 2021, the researcher presented initial findings related to SRSAI and its position within the literature to an online audience based in the United Kingdom at the Environmental History Workshop. Three months later, the researcher presented the early findings of primary source and archival research to a largely American audience at the American Society for Environmental History conference in Eugene, Oregon. The researcher spent the last two months of the grant period preparing two final presentations for audiences in the United States and the United Kingdom at the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Historians of the Twentieth-Century United States conference in Edinburgh, UK. At both conferences, the researcher presented on panels with scholars representing institutions from multiple countries. These presentations facilitated scholarly discussion, helped the researcher refine certain research questions and conclusions, introduced the researcher to others working in similar fields, and intellectually enriched the various scholarly communities who attended the conferences.
