Rate My Professor Eric Ash

Eric Ash is a Professor of History in the Department of History at Wayne State University, where he has been teaching since the fall of 2002. He previously served as Director of Graduate Studies, Acting Chair of the department, and is affiliated faculty in the Irvin D. Reid Honors College. Ash earned his A.B. from Harvard University in 1994, followed by an M.A. in 1996 and Ph.D. in 2000, both from Princeton University. His teaching and research interests broadly include the history of Britain and Ireland, early modern Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, the history of science and technology, social history, environmental history, and the history of technology. He teaches courses such as The Historian's Craft, History of Modern Britain, Readings in the History of Modern Britain, The Scientific Revolution, Britain in the Age of Empire, Shakespeare’s England: Renaissance, Reformation, Revolution, and The Emerald Isle: A History of Ireland.

Ash has made significant contributions to the field through his scholarship on expertise, state-building, and environmental projects in early modern England. He authored two monographs with Johns Hopkins University Press: Power, Knowledge, and Expertise in Elizabethan England (2004), which examines the role of technical experts in Elizabethan governance, and The Draining of the Fens: Projectors, Popular Politics, and Statebuilding in Early Modern England (2017), detailing one of the largest engineering projects of the seventeenth century that transformed wetlands into farmland amid political and ecological tensions. He edited Osiris volume 25, Expertise and the Early Modern State (2010), featuring case studies across early modern Europe. His peer-reviewed articles include “By Any Other Name: Early Modern Expertise and the Problem of Anachronism” in History and Technology (2019), “Reclaiming a New World: Fen Drainage, Improvement, and Projectors in Seventeenth-Century England” in Early Science and Medicine (2016), “Expertise and the Early Modern State” in Osiris (2010), “‘A perfect and an absolute work’: Expertise, Authority, and the Rebuilding of Dover Harbor, 1579-1583” in Technology and Culture (2000), and others in Renaissance Quarterly, The Sixteenth Century Journal, and History of Science. Ash has received the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (Wayne State University, 2008-09), Career Development Chair Award (2007-08), National Science Foundation Scholar’s Award, Science and Technology Studies Division (2002-04), Dibner Fellowship in the History of Science, Huntington Library (2013-14), Board of Governors Faculty Recognition Award (2018), and Outstanding Graduate Director (2019).