Sharon Kingsland is an Emerita Professor in the Department of History of Science and Technology at Johns Hopkins University. She joined the faculty in 1981 after earning her PhD from the University of Toronto in the same year and retired in 2020. Her research interests include the history of modern biology, especially ecology, genetics, physiology, and behavioral biology, as well as science in America, environmental sciences, and urban ecology. She has focused on the history of physiological ecology and the history of Long Term Ecological Research.

Kingsland is the author of key books such as Modeling Nature: Episodes in the History of Population Ecology (1985), The Evolution of American Ecology, 1890–2000 (2005), The Challenges of Long Term Ecological Research: A Historical Analysis (2021), and A Lab for All Seasons: The Laboratory Revolution in Modern Botany and the Rise of Physiological Plant Ecology (2023). She contributed chapters including Phytotrons Under Communism, Big Science in a Small Pond, Physiological Ecology Comes of Age, Crossing Borders, The Drive for Synthesis, Exposing the Roots: Nutrient Cycles and the World Underground, An Atomic Age Laboratory, and The Dream of Synthesis and the Laboratory Vision (2023), as well as The Origins, Early Aspects, and Development of the Long Term Ecological Research Program, Cold War Origins of Long-Term Ecological Research in Alaska, and Sustaining Long-Term Ecological Research: Perspectives from Inside the LTER Program (2021). Her articles encompass Alfred J. Lotka and the origins of theoretical population ecology (2015), The Ecological Society of America at Mid-Century: Finding Its Voice (2015), Runaway: Gregory Bateson, the Double Bind, and the Rise of Ecological Consciousness (2018), Plant “intelligence” and the misuse of historical sources as evidence (2024), Reply to Calvo, Raja, and Segundo-Ortin, “Don’t jump the gun quite yet: aiming for the true target in plant neurobiology research” (2024), Eloge: Caroline Catherine Hannaway (1943–2024) (2024), and A Tribute to Caroline Catherine Hannaway (1943–2024) (2024). She served as department chair and delivered the Raymond Pearl Memorial Lecture in 1983. Kingsland is an Academy Professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Professional Email: sharon@jhu.edu