Rosie Charles

Research

My research, provisionally titled "Steeped in Soil: Soil Fertility, Colonial Agronomists, and the Making of the Imperial Plantation, 1875-1940", recentres soil in histories of the imperial project by providing an agroecological history of colonial soil science between 1875-1940. Focused on the imperial plantation economies of the British and French empires across the Indian Ocean World, it tells the hitherto neglected and intertwined stories of soil and imperial capitalist production. Rather than positioning soil as a static and contextual background, my research engages global and trans-imperial approaches to recount how new ideas, technologies, disciplines, and institutions transformed imperial engagements with soil, and how soil actively shaped these processes as colonial agronomists worked to understand its potential, challenges, fertility, and decline.

At a time when we face a global crisis in soil fertility, particularly in the Global South, and at a time when billions of people are faced with mounting food shortages, my research aims to contribute a new understanding to the critical importance of soil to the imperial project, and to capitalism more widely.

My research is supervised by Dr. Tom Simpson and Dr. James Poskett, and is generously funded by Midlands4Cities (M4C).

Research Interests

• Imperial & Environmental History
• Global Histories of Science & Technology
• Climate History
• Nonhuman Agency

Publications

Workshop Report

• "Provisioning Conflict: Food Commodities & War", a British Academy "Commodities of Empire" International Research Network Event, University of Birmingham, September 12-13, 2024.

Blog Post

• "Empire in the Soil: Superphosphate and the British and French Imperial Manufacture, 1914-1937", New Voices Blog, Contemporary European History, October 2025.

Conferences & Workshops

• "Soil as Agent or Architect? Colonial Assam, Imperial Agronomy, and the Agency of Soil in Imperial and Global Capitalism, 1880-1930". American Society for Environmental History, "Crossroads: Environmental Histories on Contested Ground", Kansas City, March 25-28, 2026. [Upcoming]
• "The Plantation Paradox: The US Dust Bowl and the British Imperial Discourse on Soil Fertility, 1880-1930". Graduate Workshop, "Political Thought and Intellectual History", University of Cambridge, October 2024.

Awards & Funding

Midlands4Cities AHRC Doctoral Studentship Award (2025 - 2029)

College of Arts and Law Masters Level Scholarship (2023 - 2024)

Bishop Summer History Prize for Best Dissertation (2023)

King Alfred Graduation Prize (2023)

Other Experience

Copy Editor, Royal Studies Journal (2023 - Present)