CIDRAL Visiting Fellows

2022-2023: David Fedman

David Fedman is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Study in the Department of History at the University of California, Irvine. A specialist in the environmental history and historical geography of Japanese imperialism, his research has taken him to forests up and down the Pacific Rim, from Kamchatka to Kalimantan.

His first book, Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea (University of Washington Press, 2020), received the Forest History Society’s Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award and the American Historical Association’s Pacific Coast Branch Book Award.

His most recent book, as co-editor, is Forces of Nature: New Approaches to Korean Environments (Cornell University Press, 2023).

He is also, a bit further afield, engaged in an ongoing collaborative research project with geographer Cary Karacas on the incendiary bombing of Japan's wooden cities during World War II. This project is housed at JapanAirRaids.org.