CV

Download a PDF of my latest CV below.

singerman.cv_.2019-april-12Download

Current Position

  • University of Virginia
    Assistant Professor of History and American Studies
    July 2017-present

Education

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    PhD in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, & Society, 2014
  • University of Cambridge
    MPhil, History and Philosophy of Science, 2007
  • Columbia University
    BA in American History, 2006

Prior Positions

  • University of Virginia, Visiting Scholar, Americas Center/Centro de las Américas, 2016-2017
  • Harvard Business School, Research Associate, 2015-2016
  • Rutgers University, Postdoctoral Associate, Center for Historical Analysis, 2014-15

Teaching at the University of Virginia

  • History
    1. HIST 1501, “The Global Financial Crisis of 2008”
    2. HIST 1501, “Corruption and Fraud”
  • American Studies
    1. AMST 3559, “Science and Democracy in America”
    2. AMST 3001, “Theories and Methods of American Studies”

Teaching at Other Institutions

  • Spring 2016, Instructor, “Science, Technology, and Global Capitalism,” University of Pennsylvania
  • Fall 2015, Instructor, STS.004, “Intersections: Science, Technology, and the World,” MIT
  • Spring 2015, Lecturer, History 328, “Science in American Culture,” Rutgers University – New Brunswick
  • Fall 2014, Lecturer, History 251, “History of Science and Society,” Rutgers University – New Brunswick
  • October 2010, “History of Technology, Nuvu Studio, Cambridge, MA
  • Fall 2010, Teaching assistant and guest lecturer, “Ethics and Politics in Science and Technology,” Professor Vincent Lepinay, MIT
  • Spring 2010, Teaching assistant, “Bioethics,” Professors David Jones and Caspar Hare, MIT
  • Fall 2009, Teaching assistant, “The Rise of Modern Science,” Professors David Kaiser and Hanna Rose Shell, MIT

Academic Publications

  • Stupple, Aaron, David Singerman, and Leo Anthony Celi. “The Reproducibility Crisis in the Age of Digital Medicine,” npj Digital Medicine 2, no. 1 (January 29, 2019): 2.
  • “Sugar machines and the fragile infrastructure of commodities in the nineteenth century,” Osiris vol. 33 (2018), special issue on“Science and Capitalism: Entangled Histories.”
  • “The Limits of Chemical Control in the Caribbean Sugar Factory,” Radical History Review no. 127, “Political Histories of Technoscience,” January 2017.
  • “Keynesian Eugenics and the Goodness of the World,” Journal of British Studies 55, no. 3, July 2016.
  • “Science, Commodities, and Corruption in the Gilded Age,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 15, no. 3, July 2016. (Awarded the 2018 Treasury Historical Association 1500 Penn Prize.)
  • “Inventing Purity in the Atlantic Sugar World, 1860-1930,” Enterprise & Society 16, no. 4, December 2015.
  • “‘A Doubt is At Best an Unsafe Standard’: Measuring Sugar in the Early Bureau of Standards,” NIST Journal of Research, January 2007.
  • “Space Invaders: Thoughts on Militarizing Space,” in A Dialogue on Presidential Leadership and Power: Selected Papers of the 2003-4 Center Fellows (Center for the Study of the Presidency, 2004).

Public Writing

Works in Progress

  • Purity and Power in the American Sugar Empire, 1860-1940, book manuscript.
  • “Who’s Afraid of the Dark Sugar?,” essay for the collection Acquired Tastes: Stories About the Origins of Modern Food, Cohen, Kideckel, and Zeide, eds.

Reviews

  • Review of Daniel B. Rood, The Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery: Technology, Labor, Race, and Capitalism in the Greater Caribbean (Oxford University Press, 2017), in the World Sugar History Newsletter 51 (March 2019).
  • Review of Megan Raby, American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), forthcoming in New West Indian Guide 93, nos. 1-2 (2019).
  • Review of Adrian Leonard & D. Pretel, eds., The Caribbean and the Atlantic World Economy: Circuits of Trade, Money and Knowledge, 1650-1914 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), in the World Sugar History Newsletter 49 (March 2018).
  • Review of Bruce E. Baker and Barbara Hahn, The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans (Oxford University Press, 2016), in American Nineteenth-Century History 19, no. 2 (2018).
  • Review of April Merleaux, Sweetness and Civilization: American Empire and the Cultural Politics of Sweetness (University of North Carolina Press, 2015), in Agricultural History 90, no. 3 (summer 2016).
  • Review of C. Allan Jones and Robert V. Osgood, From King Cane to the Last Sugar Mill: Agricultural Technology and the Making of Hawai‘i’s Premier Crop (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015), in Hawaiian Journal of History (2016).
  • “Social History of Knowledge in the Slaveholding Atlantic World,” review of Daniel Rood, “Plantation Technocrats: A Social History of Knowledge in the Slaveholding Atlantic World” (PhD dissertation, University of California – Irvine, 2010), at dissertationreviews.org, April 2012.

Research Grants, Fellowships, and Prizes

  • Treasury Historical Association 1500 Penn Prize, 2018
  • New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowship, 2017
  • Scientific Instrument Society Research Grant, 2015-18
  • Krooss Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History, Business History Conference, 2015
  • Coleman Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History, Association of Business Historians (UK), 2015
  • Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry Research Award, 2014-15
  • Massachusetts Historical Society Short-Term Fellowship, 2014-15
  • Visiting Fellowship, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2014-15 (declined)
  • Haas Dissertation Writing Fellowship, Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2012-13
  • National Science Foundation (NSF) Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, 2011-14
  • Social Science Research Council (SSRC) International Dissertation Research Fellowship, 2011-12
  • MIT Luis Francisco Verges Graduate Fellowship, 2011
  • American Philosophical Society Library Resident Research Fellowship, 2011
  • MIT Center for International Studies Summer Research Grant, 2011 and 2013
  • NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, 2008-11
  • MIT Presidential Graduate Fellowship, 2007-8
  • Prize Research Grant, Centre for History & Economics, King’s College Cambridge, 2007-8 (declined)
  • Cambridge Overseas Trust, PhD bursary, 2007-2010 (declined)
  • Carl B. Boyer Prize for Best Essay in the History of Science, Columbia College, Columbia University, 2006
  • Center for the Study of the Presidency, Columbia University Fellowship, 2003-4

Invited Talks and Presentations

  • “Sugar!” UVA Medical Center Hour. 6 March 2019.
  • “Stolen sugar, smuggled herring, and other lessons in corruption from the Gilded Age.” United States Department of the Treasury, Treasury Historical Association 1500 Penn Prize Lecture. 6 February 2019.
  • “Sugar, science, and the history of capitalism,” Department of the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. 1 February 2018.
  • “Inventing Purity in the Atlantic Sugar World, 1860-1930,” Coleman Prize Plenary Session, Association of Business Historians Annual Meeting, Exeter, UK. 3 July 2015.
  • “Inventing Purity in the Atlantic Sugar World, 1860-1930,” Krooss Prize Plenary Session, Business History Conference, Miami, Florida. 26 June 2015.
  • “Purity and Power in the American Sugar Empire,” Lafayette College, Easton, PA. 23 April 2015.

Conference Papers and Presentations

  • “The Limits of Control in the Ingenio Central, 1860-1935.” Association of Caribbean Historians 2016 Conference, Havana, Cuba. June 2016.
  • “Sugar Work and Scientific Control in Puerto Rico and Hawaii, 1875-1920.” Organization of American Historians 2016 Annual Meeting, Providence, Rhode Island. April 2016.
  • “Local Laboratories and Global Standards in the Sugar Trade, 1907-1930.” Business History Conference 2016 Annual Meeting, Portland, Oregon. March 2016.
  • “Frozen Herring and the Gilded Age State.” American Society for Environmental History 2015 Annual Conference, Washington, D.C. 19 March 2015.
  • “Sweetness and Control: Chemists in the Sugar Market.” American Historical Association 2015 Annual Meeting, New York. 4 January 2015.
  • “Sugar, Labor, and Chemical Control in the Caribbean.” Small Conference on Labor and Empire (sponsored by Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas), University of California, Santa Barbara. 15 November 2014.
  • “Fraud, Suspicion, and Control in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Sugar Trade.” Beyond Sweetness: New Histories of Sugar in the Early Atlantic World, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. 25 October 2013.
  • “Corruption and control in the 19th-century sugar trade.” Business History Conference 2013 Annual Meeting, Columbus, Ohio. 22 March 2013.
  • “Chemical control in the Atlantic sugar trade.” 3 Societies Conference (Joint meeting of the History of Science Society, British Society for the History of Science, and Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 13 July 2012.
  • “A factory in miniature: Sugar and machines in Glasgow and Cuba.” North American Conference on British Studies, Denver, Colorado. 18 November 2011.
  • “Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis, and the ‘Doper’s Regress’ in Professional Cycling.” 2011 Conference of the British Society for the History of Science, Exeter, UK. 15 July 2011.
  • “‘Any ass can manage a sugar factory’: The nature of ‘chemical control’.” Workshop on the History of the Environment, Agriculture, Technology, and Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison (WHEATS). 9 October 2010.
  • “‘Any ass can manage a sugar factory’: Labor, Efficiency, and Chemical Control.” The History of Capitalism in the United States, Harvard University. 8 November 2008.
  • “A Room of One’s Own Polariscope, or: Is Pure Sugar in Barbados Still Pure in Berlin?” 27th Symposium of the Scientific Instrument Commission, Centre for the History of Science, University of Lisbon. 20 September 2008.

Conferences and Panels Organized

  • “After María: What Environmental History can Learn from the Caribbean,” American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting. Columbus, OH. 10-13 April 2019.
  • “Measuring Nature: Commodities and Standards,” Business History Conference 2016 Annual Meeting, Portland, Oregon. March 2016.
  • “Poisoned and Pissed: Public Scandals and Environmental Regulation,” American Society for Environmental History 2015 Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C. 18-22 March 2015.
  • “The Authority of Science at the Edges of Empire.” American Historical Association 2015 Annual Meeting, New York. 4 January 2015.
  • “Global Technologies of Commodification.” Business History Conference 2013 Annual Meeting, Columbus, Ohio. 22 March 2013.
  • Workshop on the History of the Environment, Agriculture, Technology, and Science (WHEATS). Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 2011.

Professional Experience

  • Council Member, Association of Business Historians, 2015-16
  • Research Adviser, The History Project of the Joint Centre for History and Economics, Harvard and Cambridge Universities (www.histproj.org), 2012-present
  • Graduate Student Member, MIT Institute-Wide Task Force on Budget Planning, Student Life Working Group, 2009-2010
  • Columbia College History Council, 2004-6 (represented interests of students in the College’s largest major to faculty)

Other Employment

  • Editorial intern, Vanity Fair magazine, New York City (August-September 2006). Conducted research for editors, staff writers, contributors, and special features. Substituted for editorial assistants.
  • Guest Researcher, Museum of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Gaithersburg, MD, (June-August 2005, June 2006). Created museum exhibit on Federal government role in sugar measurement, c. 1900. Researched and wrote article for NIST Journal of Research (see Publications).

Research Languages

  • French
  • Spanish

Prior Affiliations

  • Centre for Business History in Scotland, University of Glasgow (Glasgow, UK), 2012-13
  • Instituto de Estudios del Caribe, Universidad de Puerto Rico – Río Piedras (San Juan, PR), 2012
  • Center for History and Economics, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), 2007-2014