PhD, Environmental History, Georgetown University, May 2021

Adjunct Professor, History, Geogetown University, 2021-2022
Environmental Fellow, Harvard University Center for the Environment, 2022-2024
Environmental Fellow, Princeton University High Meadows Environmental Institute, 2024-

Matthew P. Johnson is an early career environmental historian whose main research area is energy in modern Latin America (with emphasis on Brazil and the Caribbean).

His first book, Hydropower in Authoritarian Brazil, is about the social and environmental impacts of the Brazilian military dictatorship’s big dams. In light of the anthropogenic climate crisis and the urgent need to divest from fossil fuels, he decided that historical research about the footprint of low-carbon energy (i.e., renewables) would be important to inform a just energy transition. To date, hydropower has spared the Earth’s atmosphere more carbon emissions than any other sources of low-carbon energy, and Brazil is one of the world’s biggest producers of hydropower. However, Brazil’s dams are also some of the world’s most controversial, with massive social and environmental impacts that fell hardest on Indigenous communities.

He is currently writing chapters for his second book, which is an environmental history of the insular Caribbean’s big oil refineries. During the twentieth century, many island governments welcomed oil refining as a means of industrial growth and access to cheap fuel. The region boasted some of the world’s biggest refineries, which brought immense benefits to companies, consumers, and local governments, however, these facilities also produced deleterious and long-lasting health and environmental impacts.

He has also published two articles and a scholarly blog post on irrigation dams in Puerto Rico, and has ideas for future research projects related to both anthropgenic climate change and mining.

His teaching interests are world history (especially global environmental history), Latin American environmental history (especially Brazil and the Caribbean), global energy history (especially fossil fuels and electrification), global health and disease history (especially infectious disease and industrial pollution), and the history of anthropogenic global warming.

Matthew P. Johnson, Hydropower in Authoritarian Brazil: An Environmental History of Low-Carbon Energy, 1960s-1990s, Cambridge University Press, 2024.

“‘For the English to See’: Animal Rescues and Greenwashing during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship’s Dam-Building Boom, 1970s-1980s,” Environmental History, Forthcoming.

 “Sacrificing Guaíra Falls: Geopolitics and the Environmental Impact of South America’s Biggest Dam, 1962-1982,” Luso-Brazilian Review 60, no. 1 (July 2023): 37-67.

 “Uma geração sem terra: injustiça ambiental em comunidades indígenas deslocadas por construções de hidrelétricas no Brasil, desde os anos 1980.” Historia ambiental Latinoamericano y Caribeña (HALAC) 11, no. 3 (December 2021): 209-233.

“‘Thirsty Sugar Lands’: Environmental Impacts of Dams and Empire in Puerto Rico since 1898.” Environment and History 27, no. 3 (August 2021): 337-365.

“Black Gold of Paradise: Negotiating Oil Pollution in the U.S. Virgin Islands, 1966-2012.” Environmental History 24, no. 4 (October 2019): 766-792.

“Swampy Sugar Lands: Irrigation Dams and the Rise and Fall of Malaria in Puerto Rico, 1898-1962.” Journal of Latin American Studies 51, no. 2 (May 2019): 243-271.

“Puerto Rico’s Ageing Dams,” White Horse Press blog, March 2021.