Current Chairholder

Marc Landry, Ph.D.

Associate Professor
Marshall Plan Professor in Austrian Studies

About:

Marc Landry is an environmental historian of modern Europe, with a regional focus on Central Europe. His research interests center on the environmental history of Europe’s tumultuous nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly the environmental contexts of industrialization and the two world wars. He is the author of Mountain Battery: The Alps, Water, and Power in the Fossil Fuel Age (Stanford University Press), and his research has appeared in the journals Environmental History and Journal of Global History. As Director of Center Austria, he has begun co-editing its annual series Contemporary Austrian Studies. Together with Eva Pfanzelter, he is creator of the podcast series History Exchange. Landry has held fellowships from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Deutsches Museum, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. He was the Fulbright-Botstiber Visiting Professor in Austrian-American Studies at the University of Innsbruck in 2016.

The mission of Center Austria is to facilitate the exchange of people and knowledge between the U.S. and Austria, and Landry himself has benefited greatly from this international partnership. As an undergraduate, he studied for a year in UNO’s Academic Year Abroad program at the University of Innsbruck. The experience launched him on the path of becoming a historian, and led to him meeting his wife, a South Tyrolean, there. He has taught as a visiting professor at the universities of Vienna and the University of Innsbruck and relishes teaching at the UNO-LFU Innsbruck international summer school as well.

A native of Colchester, Vermont, he grew up Nordic skiing in the winters and running in the short period of time when there was no snow on the ground. Nowadays he spends most of his free time scrambling to keep up with his two busy children.

Courses Taught:

• Modern World History

• History of the Habsburg Empire

• Postwar Europe

• Environmental History

• History of Modern Germany

• Modern European History

• Energy History