Sam Tyler Hege

Sam Hege is a postdoctoral associate in the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. and MA in History from Rutgers University-New Brunswick and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research broadly examines the entangled histories of the environmental justice movement, the politics of water, and the rise of industrial agriculture in the U.S. West. His current book project, “The Winds of Money”: Race, Work, and Water in the Texas Panhandle, 1900-1980, argues that the privatization of groundwater and the creation of precarious labor markets fundamentally interlinked the U.S. Sunbelt political economy and the American diet during the mid-20th century.

Outside of this research project, Sam has worked on multiple public and digital humanities projects. He has contributed to the Climates of Inequality exhibit, The Public History Project, and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities’ Democracy Conversations Project. He is currently serving as project manager for Voices from the System of Essex County, an oral history project which foregrounds the perspective of those who have navigated the foster care system to deepen public understanding of the connections between this system and structures of racial inequality.