Rate My Professor Evan Roberts

Evan Roberts holds a PhD in History from the University of Minnesota (2007), with a dissertation titled 'Her Real Sphere? Married Women’s Labor Force Participation in the United States, 1860-1940.' His earlier degrees include a BA (1995) and BSc (1998) in History, Economics, Mathematics, and Statistics from Victoria University of Wellington, followed by a BA (Hons) in History and Economics (1999, First Class Honours) and an MA in History from the University of Minnesota (2003). Roberts served as Lecturer in History at Victoria University of Wellington from 2007 to 2011, equivalent to a tenure-track Assistant Professor position. Since 2010, he has held appointments at the University of Minnesota as Assistant Professor in the Program in the History of Medicine, Sociology (since 2022), Population Studies (2016–2022), and History. He has presented seminars at the University of Otago History Department (2010) and Economics Department (2010), and delivered a public lecture on 'Height, weight and mortality in the past' in the Department of Public Health Friday Lunchtime Lecture Series at University of Otago, Wellington.

Roberts specializes in historical demography, population health, economic history, and social history, with research on anthropometric measures, mortality risks, education and health outcomes, kinship networks, migration, and New Zealand topics such as Māori physical growth, health transitions, and First World War impacts. Major publications include 'The mortality risk of being overweight in the twentieth century: Evidence from two cohorts of New Zealand men' (Explorations in Economic History, 2022, with Kris Inwood and Les Oxley); 'Breathing New Life into Death Certificates: Extracting Cause of Death from Handwritten Records' (Explorations in Economic History, 2023, with Martha J. Bailey et al.); 'The health impacts of the First World War for New Zealand: A summary and a remaining research agenda' (Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 2018, with Nick Wilson et al.); 'Physical growth and ethnic inequality in New Zealand prisons, c.1840-1975' (History of the Family, 2015, with Kris Inwood and Les Oxley); and 'The Effects of Education on Mortality: Evidence from Linked U.S. Census and Administrative Mortality Data' (Demography, 2020, with Andrew Halpern-Manners et al.). His innovative use of big data, census linkage, and citizen science has advanced historical research methods. Awards include the 2021 American Sociological Association Sociology of Population Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award, 2021 University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts Career Readiness Teaching Award, 2010 Australian Economic History Review prize, 2000 Fulbright Graduate Student Award, and 1999 F. P. Wilson Prize in New Zealand History.