Kathryn Newfont

Kathryn Newfont studies forest defense history in North America’s Appalachian mountain region. Her research documents and analyzes forest commons systems and commons-based forest protection efforts using a combination of oral history, archival sources, and evidence from lands and ecologies. Her first book, Blue Ridge Commons: Environmental Activism and Forest History in Western North Carolina (UGA Press, 2012), won the Appalachian Studies Association’s 2012 Weatherford Award for Non-Fiction and the 2012 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. She is co-editor with Debbie Lee of The Land Speaks: Voices at the Intersection of Oral and Environmental History (Oxford, 2017). Now an Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, she has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the U.S. Forest Service Grey Towers Historic Site, and the Appalachian College Association. Her current project focuses on “the Monongahela case,” a landmark federal suit brought by West Virginians that changed U.S. national forest management policy in the 1970s and continues to shape it—as well as North America’s capacity for climate resiliency—in the present day.

Research Interests: Environmental history, forest protection history, Appalachian studies, oral history and environment, commons studies

Collaborative Interests: department seminars, graduate committees, grant collaborations, guest lectures, public lectures