Peter A. Coclanis

Ph.D., Albert R. Newsome Professor, History
Associate Provost for International Affairs

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Campus Office: FedEx Global Education Center
Campus Phone Number: (919) 843-5111

Peter A. Coclanis is Associate Provost for International Affairs, and Albert R. Newsome Professor of History at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Economics and a Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Asian Studies. He took his Ph.D. degree from Columbia in 1984, the year he began teaching at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is an economic historian, who works mainly in American, Southeast Asian, and international economic history from the seventeenth century to the present day. He has published widely in the fields of agricultural history, economic development, and demographic history. His interests in demographic history relate mainly to anthropometric history, historical epidemiology, mortality, and migration. His most recent publications in demographic history are: (with Jean-Pascal Bassino) "Economic Transformation and Biological Welfare in Colonial Burma: Regional Differentiation in the Evolution of Average Height," /Economics and Human Biology/ 6 (July 2008): 212-227; "Contagion: Thinking about Cholera in Nineteenth-Century Burma," /Southeast/ /Review of Asian Studies/ 30 (2008): 166-176; and "Russia's Demographic Crisis and Gloomy Future," /The Chronicle Review/, February 19, 2010, B8-B10. He has presided over the Agricultural History Society (1997-1998) and the Historical Society (2002-2004), and in 2001 was awarded a Concurrent Professorship by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture's Agricultural History Society for "lifetime achievements in economic and agricultural history."

Related CPC Signature Themes:

Biological and Social Interactions

Population Movement, Diversity, and Inequality

Information updated on 2/18/2013