Profile for Penelope Hardy
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Penelope Hardy
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Associate Professor
History
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Penelope Hardy Pronouns: she/her/hers
Associate Professor
History
Specialty area(s)
History of science, technology, and medicine, especially technologies of ocean science.
Environmental history, especially freshwater and oceans.
Brief biography
Penelope K. Hardy is an historian of science, technology, and medicine, focusing on technologies of science, ocean sciences, and scientific exploration of the global ocean. Hardy’s research on ocean sciences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries focuses on the role of ocean-going research vessels in the development of modern scientific understanding of the oceans and the ocean-atmosphere system, and in the establishment of oceanography as a field. Her academic fields of interest include the relationship between science and the public, the role of technology in American society, the professionalization of science, and changes in popular understanding of the deep oceans. She has published on topics including military-scientific partnerships in the US and UK, meteorology in interwar Germany, and ocean mapping as both technical feat and imaginative exercise. A recipient of numerous research fellowships, including from the Smithsonian Institution, the American Meteorological Society, the Huntington Library, and the North American Society for Oceanic History, Hardy is also co-founder of an international working group examining the history of oceanic science, technology, and medicine.
Current courses at UWL
Dr. Hardy is on sabbatical for the 2026-2027 academic year.
Education
PhD in History of Science & Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
MA in History, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL
BS with merit in Aerospace Engineering (Astronautics), US Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD
Career
Teaching history
With Dr. Melina Packer (RGSS), I originated and co-advise UWL's new Science, Technology, and Society certificate.
During summer 2026, with Professor Laura Godden, I am supervising a student in the Freshwater@UW Summer Scholar Program. I supervised another Freshwater@UW Summer Scholar in 2023.
Past courses include:
Technology & Science in World History (HIS 110)
Historiography and Historical Methods (HIS 200)
How We Got Here: The Oceans and Us (HIS 202)
Survey of the History of Modern Science (HIS 280)
History of US Science and Technology (HIS 309)
Epidemics in World History (HIS 384)
Knowing the Oceans (HIS 371)
History Research Seminar (HIS 490)
Professional history
I am an affiliate of the River Studies Center, 2025 to the present.
I serve as a vice president of the International Commission of the History of Oceanography.
I am the vice president for research and publications at H-Net, and I serve as reviews editor for H-Sci-Med-Tech and H-Oceans.
Before coming to UW-La Crosse in 2019, I was a visiting assistant professor at Xavier University, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Research and publishing
With Dr. Amy Bix, Dr. Bruce J. Hunt, and Dr. Scott Gabriel Knowles, I edited the volume Spaces of Inquiry: Making Science and Technology in the Modern World, which is in press at Routledge, expected July 2026.
I organized the roundtable "Challenging Challenger: The Legacies of the Challenger Expedition 150 Years Later" for the upcoming European Society for the History of Science/History of Science Society Joint Meeting, 12-16 July 2026, in Edinburgh.
I co-edited two volumes of the Proceedings of the H-Net Teaching Conference. Volume 3 was published in July 2025, and volume 4 is forthcoming in June 2026.
With Christina Bolte and Dr. Kevin Grubbs, I edited the special journal issue The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord 35, no. 3-4, which gathers past winners of the North American Society for Oceanic History's Clark G. Reynolds Prize. Publication is forthcoming in June 2026.
I organized the roundtable “The Ocean Deep and Wide: Exploring the Breadth of Maritime Studies with The Northern Mariner” for the North American Society for Oceanic History annual meeting in New Haven, CT, 27-29 May 2026.
With Dr. Jonathan Galka, Dr. Alison Glassie, and Dr. Katrin Kleemann, I organized two symposia on "Oceanic Expertise, Extraction & Empire" and "Ocean Circulations," featuring eight panels with twenty-four scholars from around the world for the 27th International Congress of the History of Science and Technology held in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2025.
I co-wrote, with Dr. Helen M. Rozwadowski, a blog post on "Reckoning with a Racist Legacy in Ocean Science" for the International Commission of the History of Oceanography in June 2020.
Articles and chapters:
“Ships as Spaces of Inquiry in Nineteenth Century Ocean Science.” Chapter 9 in Spaces of Inquiry: Making Science and Technology in the Modern World, edited by Amy Bix, Penelope K. Hardy, Bruce J. Hunt, and Scott Gabriel Knowles. Studies in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. Routledge. In press, expected July 2026.
“’His Name Does Not Appear’: Missing Voices in Ocean Science and the Invisible Technician at Sea.” In ”Reynolds Prize Winners Issue,” ed. Christina Bolte, Kevin Grubbs, and Penelope K. Hardy, special issue, The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord 35, no. 3/4 (Fall-Winter 2025): 313-28. In press, expected June 2026.
“ ‘[B]etter seen with others' observations’: Making Ocean Science from Distributed Data and Experiential Knowledge Since the Eighteenth Century." Journal of the History of Environment and Society 10 (January 2025 [published May 2026]): 45-68.
“Thinking Inside the Box.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 54, no. 1 (February 2024): 105-108.
"Water as the Medium of Measurement: Mapping Global Oceans in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries."Ch 5 in Hydrohumanities: Water Discourse and Environmental Futures, edited by Kim DeWolff, Rina Faletti, and Ignacio López-Calvo, pp. 118-140. (Oakland: University of California Press, 2021).
“Finding the History of the World at the Bottom of the Ocean: Hydrography, Natural History, and the Sea in the Nineteenth Century.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 110, no. 4 (July 2021): 117-132.
w/ Dr. Helen M. Rozwadowski, "Maury for Modern Times: Navigating a Racist Legacy in Ocean Science," Oceanography 33, 3 (September 2020): 8-13.
"Meteorology as Nationalism on the German Atlantic Expedition, 1925-1927." History of Meteorology 8, Relocating Meteorology (December 2017): 124-144.
"Every Ship a Floating Observatory: Matthew Fontaine Maury and the Acquisition of Knowledge at Sea." In Soundings and Crossings: Doing Science at Sea 1800-1970, edited by Katharine Anderson and Helen M. Rozwadowski (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications/Watson Publishing International, 2016): 17-48.
"Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist." In "Forum: Reconsidering Matthew Fontaine Maury," International Journal of Maritime History 28, no. 2 (May 2016): 402-410.
I have reviewed scholarly books for Science, Technology and Culture, The British Journal for the History of Science, International Journal of Maritime History, Endeavour, The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord, History: Review of New Books, Global Maritime History, H-Environment, H-Water, H-War, The Michigan Historical Review, Michigan War Studies Review, and Anthropological Forum.
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