Jason Kelly

Jason M. Kelly is the director of the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute and a professor of history at IUPUI with adjunct positions in Africana studies and American studies. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His research focuses on the histories of the environment, sciences, and art and architecture.

He is currently writing “A History of the Anthropocene,” a deep history of human-nature relations. He leads Rivers of the Anthropocene, an international interdisciplinary project that examines global freshwater systems.

Kelly directs the Cultural Ecologies Project, a research program and Ph.D. track that studies and designs contemporary arts and culture initiatives, as well as the COVID-19 Oral History Project, a rapid-response collecting initiative focused on the lived experience of the pandemic.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Areas of Expertise

History of Britain, art history, 18th-century Europe, history of the Enlightenment, environmental history, Anthropocene, public art, history of science, oral history, theory.