Short Bio

Dr. Leisl Carr Childers’s research focuses on the American West, specifically the environmental history and management of the region’s public lands. Her first book, The Size of the Risk: Histories of Multiple Use in the Great Basin (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), won the Western Writers of America 2016 Spur Award for Contemporary Nonfiction. Her research has been featured on KNPR’s State of Nevada, Bundyville Season 1, PBS Frontline (American Patriot), and in the High Country News. Her digital projects have included the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project, My National Parks, and the Art of Ranching, a collaboration with CSU Extension that engages youth in intergenerational storytelling to do community history. In addition, she is the co-editor with Renee Laegreid on the Sandoz Studies book series and with Michael Childers on the Environment and Region in the American West book series, both at the University of Nebraska Press. She is part of the Western Historical Quarterly editorial team and a member of the university’s Climate Adaptation Partnership and the Public and Environmental History Center. She is an active member of the Western History Association, the American Society for Environmental History, and the National Council on Public History.

For more information about Dr. Leisl Carr Childers, see her Colorado State University faculty page.