David Christian (historian)

Early life

Christian was born in Brooklyn, New York, to British and American parents. He grew up in Nigeria and England. He completed his pre-university education at Atlantic College, an international sixth form in Wales. He then earned his B.A. from Oxford University, an M.A. in Russian history from the University of Western Ontario, and a Ph.D. in nineteenth century Russian history from Oxford University in 1974.{{cite web |access-date = 2012-12-31 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130108082723/http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/mhpir/modern_history/staff/professor_david_christian/ |archive-date = 2013-01-08

Academic career

Christian's early research interests focused on the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, with particular emphases on the Russian peasantry, including their diet and the role of vodka in their lives. He published several books on these subjects. In 1984, he co-wrote, along with R. E. F. Smith, a history about the Russian peasantry entitled Bread and Salt that showed, among other things, how such foods along with dairy products were used as seasonings.{{cite news |access-date= 2012-12-31

During the 1980s, he read widely and began a program to describe human history in the context of very large time scales from cosmology and astronomy, covering the almost fourteen billion years since the Big Bang. He began teaching his first course, what he described as Big History, in 1989.{{cite web |access-date=15 May 2013 }}

In 1998 he published A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia in which he studied the steppe and forest peoples of Inner Eurasia as opposed to 'outer Eurasia' – the crescent of agrarian civilizations from Europe, the Middle East, and India to China.

Christian transferred to San Diego State University in California in 2001. He taught students in subjects such as world history and the history of the environment, as well as the history of Inner Eurasia. In 2005, his 600-page book Maps of Time was published, which a reviewer described as a "remarkable work of synthesis and scholarship." Christian has additional teaching affiliations with the University of Vermont and Ewha Womans University in Seoul. In 2009, he transferred back to Macquarie University.{{cite news |access-date= 2012-12-31

In 2010, Christian predicted that historical scholarship would have less emphasis on document-based research and more on empirical research, and he wrote:{{cite news |access-date= 2012-12-31 |archive-date= 5 September 2012 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120905205543/http://www.historyandtheory.org/archives/indx4650.html |url-status= dead

Philanthropist Bill Gates presented David Christian at the TED 2011 Conference in Long Beach, California. At that time, Christian announced his Big History Project initiative to teach the subject to secondary school students in Australia and the United States. Currently, he is serving as president of the International Big History Association.

Awards and honors

• 1999: Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
• 2005: World History Association Book Prize, Maps of Time
• 2014: Distinguished Professor, Macquarie University

Publications

• Bread and Salt: A Social and Economic History of Food and Drink in Russia, 1984, co-written with R. E. F. Smith{{cite news |access-date= 2012-12-31
• A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, volume 1, 1998
• Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, 2005, University of California Press{{cite news |access-date= 2012-12-31
• Big History: Between Nothing and Everything, first edition, 2014, McGraw-Hill Education (co-written by Cynthia Stokes Brown and Craig Benjamin)
• Origin Story: A Big History of Everything, 2018, Little, Brown and Company,
• "Future Stories: What's Next", 2022, Little, Brown Spark.

References

References

1. (2004). "Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History". University of California Press.
2. Christian, David. "Origin Story: A Big History of Everything".
3. The Teaching Company, [http://www.thegreatcourses.com/professors/david-christian/ David Christian] Great Courses professor reference page. Retrieved Sept. 8, 2014
4. "Fellow Profile: David Christian".
5. (2014-10-07). "A mark of distinction".